If you want to read 20 Chapters ahead, be sure to check out my P-Tang12!!!
...
(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
...
"I have never failed you, Boss," Caleb replied evenly. "I will bring you his head, or I will bring you his empire. Likely both." Bronte smiled, satisfied, and tapped the roof of the carriage. The driver snapped the reins, and the heavy vehicle rolled out of the courtyard, the iron gates closing securely behind it.
And after that was done, Caleb turned on his heel and entered back into his mansion. The smile vanished from his face instantly, replaced by a mask of absolute, icy focus. He walked into the grand foyer, where he then talked with Lorenzo, who was quietly clearing the entryway.
"Lorenzo," Caleb said, his voice crisp and authoritative. "I am going into my study. I am telling you now that I would not like to be disturbed in the coming couple of days."
"Of course, Signor," Lorenzo replied smoothly, bowing his head.
"I have to prepare a complex operational plan for the Boss," Caleb elaborated, setting the expectations for the household staff. "No visitors. No telegrams unless they are marked absolute emergency. And also, my foods and drinks will be sent directly to my room. Just leave them on the tray outside the door."
Lorenzo, hearing that, nodded his head, receiving his order with perfect professionalism. Before then, he asked, "What kind of food would you like, Signor? Shall I have the cook prepare something specific?"
Caleb thought for a moment. He didn't want heavy, rich foods that would make him sluggish. "I would like fulfilling food, Lorenzo. Lean meats, fish, roasted vegetables. Something that can give me energy to do my work without putting me to sleep. My brain will need all the nutrients it can get to think of this."
Lorenzo nodded his head. "Understood, Signor. I will inform the kitchen immediately."
Caleb bypassed the grand staircase and walked down the eastern hallway, heading to his private study, a large, wood paneled room lined with bookshelves and dominated by a massive mahogany desk overlooking the back gardens.
Where, after that, Caleb goes to his room and then locked the heavy door behind him. He walked over to the desk, swept aside a few mundane ledgers, and took an empty, leather bound notebook and a fine tipped fountain pen from the top drawer.
He sat down in the high-backed leather chair, staring at the blank page. He then began to think of the kidnapping plan.
This wasn't just a simple snatch and grab. This was a symphony of destruction. He had to create a plan which will create the biggest, most devastating losses for Bronte's men, but also have the biggest, most lucrative reward for Caleb himself. He needed a meat grinder, exactly like how he created the Annesburg ambush plan, but on a much grander, more enclosed scale.
He closed his eyes, visualizing the layout of Leviticus Cornwall's private luxury riverboat, the Malcom. He had seen the schematics during his brief stint running security jobs in the city. It was a three deck floating fortress.
The bottom deck was engines and crew quarters, the middle deck was a massive casino and dining hall, and the top deck was Cornwall's private suite, guarded by a small army of elite Pinkertons.
Caleb opened his eyes and began to write, his pen scratching furiously across the paper.
First, the infiltration. He would design the plan so that Bronte's elite strike force, the remaining core of the Italian mob's muscle, would board the ship from small skiffs under the cover of a thick river fog. He would map out a route that seemed brilliant on paper, a stealthy insertion through the lower cargo holds.
But Caleb would deliberately ensure the route passed directly through a heavily fortified chokepoint. He would write down the patrol timings with a slight, fatal inaccuracy. He would tell Bronte's capos that the lower deck guards changed shifts at midnight, when in reality, they changed at 11:45 PM.
It was a fifteen minute window that would lead Bronte's men right into the crossfire of fully alert Pinkertons armed with repeating shotguns.
Phase One: The distraction, Caleb wrote in his encrypted shorthand. Capos lead the main assault. High casualty rate expected. Bronte's muscle depleted by 70%.
He will make it also where Cornwall will be successfully kidnapped. While Bronte's men were getting slaughtered on the lower decks, drawing all the security forces downward in a desperate firefight, Caleb would personally lead a very small, two man ghost team up the exterior of the paddlewheel, bypassing the bloodbath entirely.
He would breach Cornwall's suite. He would neutralize the personal bodyguards. He would drag the screaming, terrified billionaire out of his bed.
But here was the twist. He will make it so that Cornwall manages to escape at the exact last minute.
Caleb sketched a diagram of the top deck balcony. He would bring Cornwall out to the rail, making it look like an extraction. But he would intentionally leave a small, fast steam launch tied to the side of the riverboat unguarded.
After they put a massively traumatic experience on him, perhaps hanging him over the railing by his ankles, threatening to drop him into the churning paddlewheel, breaking his arrogant spirit entirely, Caleb would 'accidentally' let Cornwall slip loose during a staged firefight with reinforcements.
Cornwall would drop into the steam-launch and flee into the night.
Why let him live? So that Cornwall wouldn't try to retaliate with a calculated, corporate war. A dead Cornwall meant a board of directors executing a legal and financial siege on his assets.
A deeply traumatized, terrified Cornwall, who had just been dangled over the jaws of death in his own floating fortress, would frantically try to save himself. He would pull his resources inward.
He would stop funding the war against Bronte and instead focus entirely on building a fortress around his own miserable life, completely removing himself as an active threat to Caleb's long term plans.
And, more importantly, a live but fleeing Cornwall left his safe unguarded.
Caleb smiled a cold, terrifying smile as he wrote the next section. Where Caleb, of course, also used this chance to steal any land deeds, business ownership papers, safe keys, and untraceable bearer bonds that were belonging to Cornwall during the kidnapping in progress.
While Cornwall was screaming and running for his life, Caleb would be in the billionaire's private study. With his max level lockpicking and system inventory, he could empty a Mosler safe in sixty seconds.
He would steal the deeds to the Heartland oil fields, the controlling shares of the Cornwall Freight Company, and enough raw cash to buy the rest of Saint Denis twice over.
Making it his. Or at least, he would have the important, legally binding documents to turn it, laundering them through Herr Strauss and dummy corporations until he made it entirely his own legitimate property.
Finally, Caleb addressed the political fallout within the mafia. He wrote down the narrative he would spin upon returning to the city.
At the same time, he will then make all of the massive losses of men look like a tragic failure of Bronte's own intelligence network. He would plant forged documents suggesting Bronte's personal spies had given them the wrong patrol timings. He would subtly imply that Bronte had rushed the plan, forcing them into a trap.
It was because of Bronte's arrogance, Caleb would whisper to the surviving capos, that there are so many losses on his own side. The men, bleeding, exhausted, and disillusioned with their Don's leadership, would slowly turn to look at Caleb.
They would see the Underboss who had survived, the Underboss who had tried to warn them, the Underboss who fought beside them while Bronte sat safely in his mansion drinking wine.
They would begin to see Caleb as the new leader slowly, naturally gravitating toward his strength and tactical brilliance.
While, at the exact same time, to Bronte's face, he is putting on a flawless front as a loyal underboss until the very end. He would return to Bronte covered in (fake) blood, looking devastated, playing the role of the loyal soldier who had nearly died trying to execute the Don's vision.
Bronte, paranoid and isolated, would cling to Caleb as his only remaining trusted ally, completely blind to the knife Caleb was pressing against his throat.
Caleb closed the notebook, the leather cover slapping shut with a definitive thud. The plan was a masterpiece of lethal manipulation. It would shatter Bronte's army, traumatize Cornwall into submission, and transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars of wealth directly into Caleb's inventory.
He leaned back in his chair, listening to the soft ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner of the study. He had two days to refine the details, to memorize the blueprints of the riverboat, and to prepare his weapons.
The siege of the Malcom was going to be the bloodiest night both Bronte and Cornwall will ever seen. And when the sun rose over the Kamassa River, the old world of the Italian mob and the robber barons would be dead, and Caleb Thorne would be the only king left standing.
While he was doing all of this planning, and also perfecting the plan that he made, two days passed in a blur of intense, unbroken focus.
Just like he had ordered, Lorenzo served the foods he had requested in the two days to keep his body and mind energized and fit. The butler operated like a ghost, leaving silver trays of grilled salmon, roasted asparagus, and strong, black coffee outside the study door at precise intervals. Caleb didn't sleep much. His mind was a battlefield simulation, running every variable of the coming assault on the Malcom over and over again.
He didn't just stop at the perfect scenario. He also calculated all kinds of possibilities that could possibly happen, anticipating the chaos of a live firefight. And so, he also made two contingencies plans in the case that things didn't go as he expected or go wrong.
If Cornwall had unexpectedly doubled his personal guard, Caleb had an explosive diversion mapped out for the upper deck. If the steam launch he intended Cornwall to use for his escape was somehow damaged, Caleb mapped an alternate route that would 'force' the billionaire to dive into the river and swim for the muddy banks, still ensuring his survival and subsequent terror.
He even calculated the exact response time of the Cornwall's private force, ensuring Bronte's men would be caught in the crossfire if they took too long to execute the initial breach.
And after he had done with all of that, mapping out every bullet trajectory and every psychological pressure point, Caleb smiled. He was profoundly satisfied with the main and contingencies plans that had been made in the two days. It was a masterpiece of orchestrated violence.
Before finally, he stopped his seclusion, should he say. He closed the leather notebook, slid it into the inner pocket of his coat, and unlocked the heavy door of his study.
When he left his study, the grand hallway was quiet. But Lorenzo immediately appeared from the adjacent parlor, his posture impeccably straight. The butler bowed his head and informed him that the messenger had just arrived.
"Signor Bronte asked me to inform you that he will be waiting for you at his mansion," Lorenzo reported smoothly. "He stated that whatever plan you have come up with, there is absolutely no need to brief anyone but him. And then, he intends that you will immediately execute the plan tonight, before Cornwall makes his first move against us."
Caleb, hearing that, smiled a cold, shark-like smile and nodded his head at that. Bronte was so desperate and paranoid that he was bypassing his usual council of capos entirely, handing the reins of the entire operation directly to Caleb without any oversight. It was perfect.
"Thank you, Lorenzo, for the information," Caleb said, his voice completely calm.
Before then, he says to prepare a hot bath for him. "So I can clean myself up for my meeting with Mr. Bronte. The dust of the road is still clinging to me."
And hearing that, Lorenzo nodded his head. But when he wanted to walk away, the butler remembered something. He then stopped and turned around, before saying respectfully to Caleb, "Forgive me, Signor, I almost forgot to mention. Mr. Bronte also has sent you a gift."
Caleb raised an eyebrow. "A gift?"
"Yes, Signor," Lorenzo confirmed. "A reward for you for being such a loyal and capable man, as the messenger phrased it. It's a horse, which has been stored at the stable by Marco. It arrived early this morning."
And hearing that, Caleb was genuinely surprised. Bronte was parting with valuable assets to ensure Caleb's loyalty right before the strike. Caleb nodded his head, recovering his composure quickly, thanking Lorenzo for the information.
After that, Caleb waited for a moment in the parlor, pouring himself a single glass of bourbon, before one of the maids informed him that the bath was ready.
And so he went to take a bath first, sinking into the scalding water, cleaning himself up and letting the heat loosen the tight muscles in his shoulders. He scrubbed the grime away, and also he meticulously shaved his stubble beard, revealing a sharp, completely clean-shaven jawline that made him look even more aristocratic and dangerous.
...
Name: Caleb Thorne
Age: 23
Body Attributes:
- Strength: 8/10
- Agility: 8/10
- Perception: 9/10
- Stamina: 8/10
- Charm: 8/10
- Luck: 9/10
Skills:
- Handgun (Lvl MAX)
- Rifle (Lvl MAX)
- Firearms Knowledge (Lvl MAX)
- Past Life Memory (Lvl MAX)
- Knife (Lvl MAX)
- Blunt Weapon (Lvl 2)
- Sneaking (Lvl MAX)
- Horse Mastery (Lvl MAX)
- Poker (Lvl MAX)
- Hand to Hand Combat (Lvl MAX)
- Eagle Eye (Lvl 2)
- Dead Eye (Lvl 4)
- Bow (Lvl 3)
- Pain Nullifier (Lvl 4)
- Physical Regeneration (Lvl 3)
- Crafting (Lvl MAX)
- Persuasion (Lvl MAX)
- Mental Fortitude (Lvl MAX)
- Cooking (Lvl MAX)
- Teaching (Lvl 3)
- Trilingual Language Proficiency - G, I, & C (Lvl MAX)
- Inventory System (Permanent - 50x50x50)
- Acting (Lvl MAX)
- Alcohol Resistance (Lvl MAX)
- Treasure Hunter (Lvl MAX)
- Drugs Resistance (Lvl MAX)
- Business (Lvl 2)
- Leadership (Lvl 2)
Money: 3,322 dollars and 60 cents
Inventory: 275,992 dollars and 61 cents, 11 gold nuggets, 70 gold bars, 1 Double Action, 1 Schofield, 2 Colm's Schofields, 1 land deed (Parcel), 1 Mauser, 1 Semi Auto Pistol, 1 Lancaster Repeater, 1 Old Wood Jewelry Box, 1 F.F Mausoleum small brass key, 1 Ruby, 1 Braithwaites Land Deed, 1 Broken Pirate Sword, 1 Milton's Safety Deposit Key, 1 Senator Pendleton Sealed Envelope, Proof Of Marlin-Thorne Firearms Co., 10 Dynamites, 1 LeMat, 1 M1899, 1 Carcano, & 1 Ownership deed of Doyle's Tavern
Bank: -