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(A/N: Don't forget to give those power stones to Skyrim everyone!)
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"There are others in the ranks," Vincenzo said, his eyes gleaming with revolutionary fire. "Men who hate Bronte's arrogance. Men who are tired of starving while he drinks imported wine. Once we are 'dead', we can quietly reach out to them. We build an army in the dark."
"You are the only one fit to lead, Underboss," Silvio rumbled, clapping a massive hand on Caleb's shoulder. "When Bronte falls, we put you in the chair."
Caleb hearing that, of course, acted perfectly. He didn't smile triumphantly. He took a step back, shaking his head, his expression a masterpiece of humble reluctance.
He acted like he didn't deserve the position. "No," Caleb said softly, holding up his hands. "I am just a soldier, like you. I am unworthy of the title of Don. I only want to protect this family from a madman."
This, of course, was the absolute best thing he could have said. His feigned humility only made the sixteen men support him even further. A leader who didn't ruthlessly crave power was a leader they could trust implicitly.
They began shouting over each other, even giving passionate reasons why he was the perfect choice.
"You are the only one who fights beside us!" Vincenzo argued hotly.
"You have the mind for it!" another capo yelled. "You planned the Annesburg raid! You made the city fear us again!"
"You are the only one strong enough!" Silvio finalized, his massive presence ending the argument. "You are the Don we need."
Caleb just smiled inwardly at this. The performance was flawless. He had achieved exactly what he wanted to achieve. He had manipulated sixteen hardened killers into begging him to become their supreme leader.
In the end, he let out a slow, heavy sigh of concession, looking at the men with profound gratitude. Saying, like a reluctant king accepting his crown, how he will live up to their trust and support.
"If that is what the family demands," Caleb said, his voice ringing with absolute, unshakeable resolve. "Then I will not fail you. We will take this city. Together."
A cheer went up in the warehouse, muffled quickly by Vincenzo to ensure they weren't heard from the street.
And so with that settled, the true tactical work began. They gathered around a large, overturned shipping crate, Caleb spreading out a rough map of Saint Denis he had drawn from memory. They began to plan exactly how to fake the deaths of the sixteen of them by Caleb.
It couldn't just be a simple disappearance, Bronte was paranoid, but he wasn't stupid. He would expect solid proof, especially since the situation is like this.
"We have to make it look realistic," Caleb instructed, his mind operating with cold, lethal logic. "Bronte expects me to hunt you down over the next few days. If you all vanish at once, he'll suspect that itsba ruse or a trap."
He detailed the strategy he have in mind. Some will be fake killed in groups of more than one person, while some will be fake killed one by one.
"Vincenzo," Caleb pointed at the map. "You and three others were last seen heading toward the slums in the eastern ward. I will report that I cornered you in a tenement building and burned it down. We'll find a derelict building and set the blaze tonight."
"Silvio," Caleb looked at the giant. "You're too recognizable. You need a spectacular end. I'll report that I caught you on the docks trying to board a freighter, and we had a shootout that ended with you falling into the bay, into the water."
But there's one vital, gruesome thing in common for all the fabricated assassinations. And that is, they will leave a dead body of other people to serve as the necessary proof for Bronte's clean up crews or the police.
They couldn't use innocent civilians, even in a mob war, that drew too much heat on them even if they have the police in their pockets. They will use low level criminals or outlaws they will capture from the gutters of Saint Denis. Thugs, highwaymen, robbers, low life men who wouldn't be missed.
"We snatch them from the alleys," Caleb explained, his voice devoid of emotion. "Men of roughly your height and build. We dress them in your clothes. Your coats, your hats, your shoes, everything we can."
Caleb looked around the circle of hardened men, ensuring they understood the brutal necessity of the next step.
"And their faces will be destroyed," Caleb stated flatly. "To not be recognized by tcanpolice or by Bronte's men. Either due to a shotgun blast at close range or a heavy rifle shot directly in the face. It has to look like a violent, messy execution."
The sixteen men didn't flinch. This was the currency of their world. They nodded in grim understanding. The plan was brutal, efficient, and completely foolproof.
Over the next four days, the shadow 'war' was waged in the dark alleys and abandoned warehouses of Saint Denis.
Caleb Thorne became a ghost, hunting his own men, leaving a trail of fabricated carnage that terrified the city.
The first night, a massive fire consumed a derelict tenement building in the eastern slums. When the fire brigade finally extinguished the blaze, they found four charred, unrecognizable bodies in the basement, alongside the melted remains of Vincenzo's distinctive sawed off shotgun. Caleb reported the successful 'cull' to Bronte the next morning, bringing the sawed off shotgun as evidence.
The second night, two bodies were found in a muddy ditch outside the city limits, their faces obliterated by buckshot, wearing the exact tailored coats of two of Bronte's missing capos.
On the third night, a massive shootout was staged near the commercial docks. Caleb and Silvio fired their weapons into the air, screaming curses in Italian, before a massive splash was heard. The dockworkers reported seeing the Underboss shoot a giant man off the pier. A bloated, faceless corpse washed up the next morning, wearing Silvio's massive boots.
One by one, the sixteen elite enforcers were systematically 'erased' from the world of the living by Caleb.
And every morning, Caleb would return to the grand mansion in the Garden District. He would walk into Bronte's opulent living room, his face an emotionless mask, his hands 'stained' with the blood of his brothers.
He would pour himself a drink, look the Don directly in the eye, and report another name crossed off the list.
Bronte, completely blinded by his own paranoia and Caleb's flawless acting due to his maxed skill, believed every single word. The Don grew increasingly relaxed, the dark circles under his eyes fading. He believed he had successfully purged the poison from his ranks, leaving only his utterly loyal, terrifyingly efficient Underboss to stand by his side.
Bronte didn't realize that every 'death' Caleb reported was actually another soldier added to the phantom army gathering in the catacombs beneath the city. He didn't realize that the butler was meticulously copying the Don's private ledgers and passing the information to Caleb.
By the dawn of the fifth day, the cull was complete. The sixteen men were officially dead in Bronte's mind.
Angelo Bronte was completely, entirely alone, sitting on a throne that had already been hollowed out from the inside, only small weak foundation was oresnet. Not knowint that Caleb, the loyal executioner, was finally ready to burn his empire to the ground and forge his own.
Meanwhike, deep beneath the bustling, sunlit cobblestone streets of Saint Denis, a completely different kind of city existed. It was a sprawling, subterranean labyrinth of ancient French catacombs, forgotten brick sewers, and hidden smuggler tunnels that wove like a dark web beneath the Garden District and the muddy slums alike. It was here, in the cold, dripping darkness, that the dead walked, and the revolution was quietly born.
While Bronte sat in his opulent mansion, completely convinced that he had successfully purged the poison from his ranks, the sixteen men that were thought dead by the Don and the remaining members of the mob were actually working tirelessly.
They had not been resting in the past five days. Instead, they had become phantoms, slipping out of the catacombs under the cover of the midnight fog to execute Caleb's grand design. They were actively contacting those they knew would definitely join their cause.
Vincenzo and Silvio, the newly appointed generals of Caleb's phantom army, were meticulous in their selection. They didn't target the men who wore fine suits and hovered around Bronte's dining table.
They targeted the muscle. The street soldiers, the enforcers, the debt collectors, and the dock workers. They specifically sought out the ones that were oppressed by Bronte himself, the hardened men who bled for the family but never got the chance to be promoted or show their true skill.
Angelo Bronte had grown lazy and paranoid in his current position. He had cultivated an inner circle of sycophants, yes men, and smooth talking administrators.
Due to Bronte actually not caring about the men who did the real, dirty work, and also because he only actually promoted those who flattered or listened to him profusely, a massive reservoir of bitter resentment had been silently filling up within the lower ranks of the Italian mafia for years. Caleb had seen it, and now, Vincenzo was tapping into it.
The recruitment scenes played out in the shadows of the city. Late at night, in the back alleys behind the cheap saloons of the eastern slums, Vincenzo would step out of the darkness, his supposedly burnt and dead face hidden beneath the brim of a low pulled hat.
He cornered a man named Mateo, a veteran enforcer who had been passed over for a capo position three times in favor of Bronte's wealthy nephews. Mateo drew his knife, terrified at seeing a ghost, but Vincenzo merely raised his good hand, stepping into the dim light of a flickering streetlamp.
"Put the blade away, Mateo," Vincenzo rasped, his voice low and urgent. "I am no ghost. The Underboss saved us."
Mateo's eyes widened in sheer disbelief. "Vincenzo? They said... they said McLaughlin burned you alive in the tenements."
"Bronte ordered him to kill us," Vincenzo corrected, his eyes gleaming with revolutionary fire. "Because we dared to speak the truth about the slaughter on the riverboat. The Don wanted us dead to cover his own cowardice. But McLaughlin... he is a man of honor. He faked our deaths. He paid us from his own pocket. And now, he is building an army in the dark to take this city from the old fool."
Vincenzo reached into his heavy coat and pulled out a thick stack of the crisp, hundred dollar bills that they had stolen from one of Bronte's hidden safe. He pressed the money firmly into Mateo's calloused hand.
"Look at this money, Mateo. When has Bronte ever paid you what you are worth? When has he ever stood beside you in a firefight? He promotes the men who kiss his rings, while we starve and bleed in the mud. The Underboss fights on the front lines. The Underboss values loyalty, not flattery. We are taking the city, Mateo. Will you die for a Don who doesn't know your name, or will you fight for a king who bleeds beside you?"
The sheer weight of the money, combined with the undeniable, miraculous survival of Vincenzo, shattered whatever fragile loyalty Mateo still held for Angelo Bronte. The enforcer gripped the cash, his jaw clenching tightly, his eyes hardening with absolute resolve. He nodded his head slowly. "Tell the Underboss he has my gun. Where do I go?"
This exact scene repeated itself dozens of times across the dark underbelly of Saint Denis over the course of five days. Silvio utilized his massive, terrifying presence to recruit the dockworkers and the smugglers, pulling men into empty warehouses and showing them that the 'dead' were very much alive and preparing for war.
Men who had been cast aside, underpaid, and unappreciated were suddenly given a purpose, a fortune, and a leader they could genuinely respect.
Caleb's phantom army swelled rapidly, growing from sixteen to fifty, and then to over a hundred heavily armed, deeply motivated men, all waiting patiently in the subterranean tunnels for the signal to strike.
And incredibly, they did this without getting any attention from Bronte.
How could an entire underground army mobilize directly beneath the nose of the most powerful crime boss in Lemoyne? Because Caleb had meticulously crafted an absolute blackout of information. Caleb had made Bronte to be essentially blind to what happened in Saint Denis by utilizing the butler he head convinced.
The butler had proven to be the most devastating weapon in Caleb's entire arsenal. The terrified, fiercely loyal butler controlled the flow of information into the grand mansion with absolute, surgical precision.
When low level street captains came to the estate to report strange movements in the slums or whispers of 'dead' men walking the alleys, the butler would meet them at the front door with a polite, dismissive smile.
"The Don is resting, Signore," the butler would say, his tone perfectly apologetic but unyielding. "His nerves are strained from the recent tragedies. He has explicitly ordered that all matters of street security are to be brought directly to the Underboss, Signor McLaughlin. Please, take your concerns to him."
And so, the reports would go straight to Caleb, who would promptly file them away into the fireplace.
When telegrams arrived from Bronte's remaining spies in other cities, warning of shifting loyalties or unaccounted funds, the butler intercepted the envelopes from the silver tray in the foyer.
He would quietly walk into the kitchen, break the wax seals, and drop the papers directly into the blazing hearth, watching the ink curl and turn to ash before pouring Bronte another glass of expensive, imported Tuscan wine.
The butler kept the Don completely insulated, suffocating him in luxury and false security. He curated Bronte's daily schedule, ensuring the Don only met with the few remaining sycophants who would tell him exactly what he wanted to hear, that the city was pacified, the traitors were dead, and his reign was absolute.
Bronte sat by his fireplace, completely blind, deaf, and dumb to the revolution brewing beneath his very floorboards.
Meanwhile, Caleb, on the surface, was actively and flawlessly acting like the good Underboss.
With his 'grim duty' of executing the traitors supposedly completed, Caleb shifted his performance to that of the dutiful, indispensable right hand man. He presented himself at the mansion every morning, immaculately dressed in his tailored charcoal suits, offering Bronte his absolute deference. He made sure that he toured all of Saint Denis with Bronte, playing the role of the devoted son being shown his future inheritance.
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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 3)
Money: 3,322 dollars and 60 cents
Inventory: 280,992 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, 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, 3 Diamonds, & Important Documents & Deeds Of Cornwall
Bank: -