If you want to read 20 Chapters ahead and more, be sure to check out my P-Tang12!!!
...
(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
...
Pendleton adjusted his wire rimmed spectacles, his eyes glinting with sheer, unadulterated greed. "We have to arrange for the official records to be 'accidentally' burned in a localized fire. We have to have the active warrants 'misplaced' during a departmental transfer. And to accomplish all of these bureaucratic needs..."
The Senator paused. He looked at Caleb, and with a brazen, deeply ingrained political instinct, he rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. He made the universal money gesture.
"...Including, as I said, the bureaucratic needs. My connections do not take such massive risks for free. It requires capital. Significant capital to grease the wheels of justice."
Caleb watched the corrupt politician rub his fingers together, and he let out a long, slow sigh. He saw this exact behavior coming from a mile away. It was the absolute hypocrisy of the American government encapsulated in a single gesture.
A man who had just been terrified of political suicide a moment ago was now eagerly negotiating the price of his own corruption.
Before saying anything else, Caleb shook his head, a cynical smirk crossing his face. "Tell me, Senator... how much does the United States government need to sell their soul to me?"
Pendleton hesitated, his greedy mind calculating exactly how much he could bleed the billionaire mob boss. "To completely erase the Blackwater bounties for an entire gang of heavily wanted men? To pay off the clerks, the marshals, and the Pinkerton directors? It will easily require... Twenty five thousand dollars. Perhaps more, in untraceable bearer bonds or pure gold."
Caleb's eyes went completely flat and cold. The charming host vanished.
"I see," Caleb murmured, his voice dropping an octave, becoming entirely devoid of warmth. "But I sincerely hoped you would also make it so that it's as cheap as humanly possible, Senator. Because I seem to recall that the money you owe me personally, the massive gambling debt I so graciously cleared for you on the Grand Morrigan, the riverboat, without asking for a single cent of interest, was quite big after all."
Caleb leaned across the desk, completely invading the politician's space. "Do not try to extort the man who holds the deed to your political career, Nicholas. I will provide the capital required to bribe your connections. But you will not take a single dime off the top for yourself. Am I explicitly understood?"
Pendleton swallowed hard, the fear instantly returning. "Yes! Yes, of course, Don McLaughlin! Not a single dime!"
"Good," Caleb nodded, sitting back. "And furthermore, as fast as possible, I do not want it to be a long time. I want this handled with absolute, terrifying urgency."
So the two of them continued the highly intense, high stakes discussion. They haggled over the logistics, the safe houses required for the bribes, and the exact timeline of the bureaucratic erasure.
Caleb laid down the absolute law. He wanted it to be entirely cleared in a month.
"Thirty days, Senator," Caleb demanded, tapping his leather gloved finger against the mahogany desk. "In exactly thirty days, I want Arthur Morgan and John Marston to be able to walk into the federal bank in Blackwater, tip their hats to the local sheriff, and walk out without a single gun being drawn on them."
"Thirty days is impossible, sir!" Pendleton protested frantically, waving his hands. "The federal wheels grind slowly! It takes weeks just for a letter to reach the correct desk in the capital, let alone orchestrate a synchronized erasure of federal warrants across three different states! I need three months, at the bare minimum!"
But Caleb's ultimatum was absolute. He locked his piercing blue eyes onto the sweating politician.
"A month," Caleb stated, his voice a low, vibrating hum of uncompromising power. "No more, no less. You are a United States Senator. You have the telegraph lines. You have the authority. If you need to personally ride a train to Washington and physically burn the ledgers yourself, then you had better buy a ticket tonight. You have thirty days to deliver my family's freedom, or I will deliver your gambling markers and your extortion letters to the front page of the Saint Denis Times."
Pendleton stared at the Don, realizing that he was entirely, absolutely trapped. The man across the desk was a force of nature, and there was no negotiating with gravity.
The Senator slowly lowered his head in utter, complete defeat. "Thirty days. I... I will make it happen, Don McLaughlin. I swear to you."
"I know you will, Nicholas," Caleb smiled, the warmth instantly returning as the deal was successfully struck. "Antonio will escort you out and arrange for the bribe money to be delivered to your secure drop points. It has been a genuine pleasure doing business with you."
After the intense, highly consequential discussion was officially concluded, the Senator took his leave. He practically stumbled out of the private study, his expensive suit rumpled and his nerves completely shredded.
He didn't return to the capital immediately, he left to sleep at the most exclusive, heavily guarded luxury hotel in Saint Denis, needing a stiff drink and a quiet room to begin drafting the treasonous telegrams to his corrupt connections in Washington.
With the political salvation of his gang finally, flawlessly set into motion, the heavy, suffocating burden of the federal bounties was officially ticking away on a thirty day timer. Caleb had manipulated the highest echelons of the government, completely neutralizing the Pinkerton threat without firing a single bullet.
And then, days passed again.
For a couple of days, the sprawling Garden District mansion returned to a state of highly productive, comfortable peace. Arthur and Hosea stepped fully into their executive roles, managing the massive influx of legitimate capital flowing from the casinos, the docks, and the newly established fast food restaurant that Pearson was successfully running in the city center.
John spent his days secretly finalizing the arrangements for his upcoming wedding with Abigail, while Mary-Beth continued to dominate the literary world, her novels selling out across the state.
But Caleb was a man who built empires, and an empire required heavy industry.
It was exactly four days after the meeting with the Senator that the industrial landscape of Saint Denis changed forever.
Early in the morning, a massive, deafening blast from a steam whistle echoed across the eastern rail yards of the city.
The highly anticipated, heavily armored freight train from Connecticut, bringing in the absolute pinnacle of the Thorne-Marlin Firearms Company's industrial might, finally arrived at Saint Denis.
It was a spectacular, terrifying display of sheer, unadulterated corporate power. The train was over twenty cars long, pulled by two massive, coal burning locomotives. As the train screeched to a halt on the private, heavily guarded tracks Caleb had purchased specifically for this purpose, the ground physically shook beneath their feet.
Arthur, acting as the absolute Head of Security, was already standing on the platform, surrounded by fifty heavily armed, suited mafia soldiers. He watched with a wide, deeply impressed grin as the heavy iron doors of the freight cars were thrown open.
The train was bringing in the absolute best supplies and heavy industrial tools needed to begin building the massive firearm factory down here in Saint Denis.
Inside the cars were massive, gleaming steel milling machines, heavy hydraulic presses, thousands of crates filled with raw, high grade iron ore, and specialized tools designed to forge the most advanced repeater rifles and revolvers in the world.
But it wasn't just machinery.
Stepping off the luxury passenger cars at the rear of the train were dozens of men wearing bowler hats, sharp suits, and carrying heavy leather briefcases. This was the highly specialized manpower Caleb had demanded.
These were the veteran master gunsmiths, the senior factory foremen, and the brilliant industrial engineers sent directly by John Marlin from the Connecticut headquarters. They had traveled hundreds of miles south to oversee the construction, train the local workforce, and ensure the Don's vision was executed flawlessly.
Arthur stepped forward, adjusting his suit jacket, and extended his massive hand to the lead engineer stepping off the train.
"Welcome to Saint Denis, boys," Arthur rumbled, his deep voice carrying over the hiss of the steam engines. "The land is cleared, the perimeter is secured, and Don McLaughlin expects greatness. Let's get to work."
The lead engineer shook Arthur's hand, looking highly intimidated by the massive, scarred enforcer and the army of mafia guards surrounding the rail yard. "We are ready to begin immediately, sir. We will have the foundations poured by the end of the week."
And with that, the massive, grueling labor commenced.
The heavy equipment was unloaded from the train cars using massive steam powered cranes, loaded onto reinforced, heavy duty transport wagons, and hauled directly to the sprawling, completely cleared plot of land on the western outskirts of the city.
The local laborers Caleb had hired from the slums cheered as the wagons rolled in, knowing that the arrival of the factory meant years of steady, high paying jobs for their families.
The Thorne-Marlin Firearms factory, the absolute crown jewel of Caleb's legitimate, military industrial complex, had officially broken ground. And so began the monumental, incredibly grueling construction of the factory building first.
The sprawling, heavily cleared plot of land on the western outskirts of Saint Denis was instantly transformed from an empty expanse of dirt and uprooted stumps into a chaotic, roaring theater of Gilded Age industry.
The air was thick with the scent of churning mud, burning coal, and the sharp, metallic tang of hot iron. Hundreds of laborers swarmed over the site like a highly coordinated army of ants, their shouts and the rhythmic, deafening thud of sledgehammers echoing across the river basin.
Caleb was not a man who simply signed a check and waited in his comfortable mansion for the keys to be handed over. He understood that a project of this staggering magnitude required the absolute, unblinking eye of the master.
He was there to oversee it firsthand.
Dressed in a heavy, dark woolen overcoat to ward off the damp chill, Caleb stood on a slightly elevated, hastily constructed wooden viewing platform that overlooked the massive, yawning trench of the primary foundation. The sheer scale of the blueprint was finally taking physical shape beneath him.
Standing immediately beside the Don were the two men directly responsible for turning the paper schematics into brick and mortar, the nervous, highly educated lead architect imported from the Connecticut headquarters, and the burly, soot covered local workers' overseer who commanded the slum laborers.
The architect, a man with thick spectacles and a rolled up sheaf of blueprints tucked nervously under his arm, was actively explaining to Caleb the intricate details of the construction that was currently being done.
"The primary load bearing foundations are being poured twenty feet deep, Don McLaughlin," the architect shouted, having to raise his voice significantly to be heard over the deafening roar of a steam-powered pile driver slamming a massive wooden pylon into the mud. "Because we are operating so close to the Lannahechee River, the water table is incredibly high. We are utilizing a specialized, rapid curing Portland cement to ensure that the heavy hydraulic presses and the massive milling machines do not sink or shift a single millimeter once they are fully operational."
Caleb nodded his head, his sharp blue eyes tracking the massive buckets of wet concrete being swung over the trench by heavy iron cranes. "And the ventilation for the testing ranges?"
"Already being integrated into the eastern wall framing, sir," the local overseer chimed in, pointing a thick, calloused finger toward a rising lattice of steel beams. "We are building massive brick exhaust chimneys specifically for the indoor firing ranges. The gunpowder smoke will be drafted up and completely pushed out over the river, ensuring the factory floor remains breathable for the gunsmiths."
"Make sure the brickwork on those chimneys is double reinforced," Caleb instructed, his max level Business and Crafting Skill easily keeping pace with the experts. "A factory that manufactures high-grade ammunition and repeater rifles is inherently sitting on a mountain of combustible powder. I will not have my investment go up in flames because a mason wanted to save time on the mortar."
"It will be triple reinforced, Don McLaughlin. You have my absolute word," the architect promised frantically, scribbling a furious note onto his blueprints.
Caleb was not standing on that wooden viewing platform alone. Surrounding him was the absolute pinnacle of his syndicate's terrifying hierarchy.
Arthur, Hosea, Silvio, and Vincenzo had accompanied Caleb on this construction site visit. They stood slightly behind him, projecting a monolithic, unbreakable wall of lethal authority.
Hosea leaned on his silver headed walking cane, his calculating eyes scanning the hundreds of men working in the mud. He was mentally calculating the sheer payroll required to keep this massive machine moving, deeply impressed by the organized chaos.
Arthur, however, wasn't looking at the blueprints or the rising brick walls. As the absolute Head of Security for the entire operation, his green eyes were locked onto the perimeter and the labor force.
He had strategically positioned several of the family's most elite, heavily armed capos all around the massive construction site. These were the scarred, ruthless veterans of the Italian mafia, dressed in dark city coats, holding repeating rifles casually across their chests as they slowly walked the elevated scaffolding and the muddy perimeter lines.
...
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 MAX)
- Sneaking (Lvl MAX)
- Horse Mastery (Lvl MAX)
- Poker (Lvl MAX)
- Hand to Hand Combat (Lvl MAX)
- Eagle Eye (Lvl MAX)
- Dead Eye (Lvl MAX)
- Bow (Lvl MAX)
- Pain Nullifier (Lvl MAX)
- Physical Regeneration (Lvl MAX)
- Crafting (Lvl MAX)
- Persuasion (Lvl MAX)
- Mental Fortitude (Lvl MAX)
- Cooking (Lvl MAX)
- Teaching (Lvl MAX)
- Trilingual Language Proficiency - G, I, & C (Lvl MAX)
- Inventory System (Permanent - 100x100x100)
- Acting (Lvl MAX)
- Alcohol Resistance (Lvl MAX)
- Treasure Hunter (Lvl MAX)
- Drugs Resistance (Lvl MAX)
- Business (Lvl MAX)
- Leadership (Lvl MAX)
Money: 2,772 dollars and 60 cents
Inventory: 284,392 dollars and 61 cents, 11 gold nuggets, 74 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, Proof Of Marlin-Thorne Firearms Co., 10 Dynamites, 1 LeMat, 1 M1899, 1 Carcano, 1 Ownership deed of Doyle's Tavern, 3 Diamonds, & Important Documents & Deeds Of Cornwall
Bank: -