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!)
...
"It's like something out of a storybook," Mary-Beth whispered, leaning her head against his shoulder. "It's so clean. So peaceful. I can see why you chose to build your hotel here, Caleb. It's a place where people can come to forget the ugly parts of the world."
"That's the idea," Caleb murmured, kissing the top of her head. "A sanctuary. A place where the past can't reach us."
They continued their stroll, enjoying the nature and the clean, invigorating air. They walked past the small, quaint shops, drawing a few curious but polite glances from the local townsfolk, who were unaccustomed to seeing such a handsome, well dressed couple wandering aimlessly through their working class town.
Eventually, they wandered away from the main thoroughfare, following a narrow, winding dirt path that led up the side of a steep, grassy hill overlooking the valley. The noise of the town faded away, replaced by the chirping of mountain bluebirds and the rustle of wind through the Aspen leaves.
They found a perfect spot, a wide, flat clearing carpeted with soft, emerald green moss, shaded by the sprawling branches of a massive, ancient pine tree. The view from the clearing was breathtaking, they could see the entirety of Strawberry below, the winding river, and the majestic, snow capped peaks of Mount Shann in the distance.
"This is perfect," Mary-Beth declared, her eyes shining with happiness.
Caleb took off his dark vest, laying it down on the moss to give her a clean place to sit. He then walked over to where he had hitched Morgan near the base of the trail. He reached into the horse's saddlebags and pulled out a small, carefully wrapped bundle.
He walked back to the clearing and sat down beside Mary-Beth, unwrapping the bundle to reveal a veritable feast.
Mary-Beth had prepared and put in Morgan's saddlebags earlier that morning. She had been incredibly thoughtful, knowing they would be away from the homestead's kitchen all day.
There were thick slices of sharp cheddar cheese she had procured from Valentine, a generous portion of cured, smoked ham, and a fresh, crusty loaf of bread that Pearson had baked the night before. She had even packed two crisp, red apples and a small glass bottle of sweet apple cider to wash it all down.
"You planned ahead, I see," Caleb smiled, taking a piece of the fresh bread and breaking it in half, handing a piece to her.
"A girl has to be prepared when she's traveling with a busy businessman," Mary-Beth teased, accepting the bread and taking a delicate bite of the cheese. "You get so focused on your blueprints and your hotels, I was worried you might forget to eat entirely."
They sat together under the shade of the pine tree, eating the simple but delicious food, entirely content in each other's company.
They talked about everything and nothing. Mary-Beth spoke passionately about the new romance novel she was reading, excitedly describing the dramatic plot twists and the tragic heroes.
Caleb listened with genuine interest, completely setting aside the brutal calculus of his mob war to focus entirely on the cadence of her voice and the spark in her eyes.
He told her about his grand visions for the hotel, the specific types of flowers he wanted planted in the courtyard, the imported Italian marble he planned for the lobby floors, and how he wanted a massive library constructed on the second floor, stocked with thousands of books, specifically with her in mind.
"A library?" Mary-Beth gasped, her hand flying to her chest. "Just for the hotel guests?"
"For the guests, yes," Caleb said, his eyes locking onto hers with profound affection. "But the key to the private collection will be yours. You can sit by the window, look out at the mountains, and write those novels you've always dreamed of writing. Leslie Floyd is going to need a quiet place to work, after all."
Mary-Beth's eyes welled up with happy tears. She set down her food and practically tackled him, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck and burying her face in the crook of his shoulder.
"You are too good to me, Caleb Thorne," she whispered fiercely. "I don't know what I did to deserve you, but I thank God every day that you walked into our camp."
Caleb wrapped his arms around her, holding her securely against his chest. As he looked out over the pristine mountain valley, feeling the warmth of the woman he loved in his arms, the dark, bloody secrets of his other life, the poisoned leader in the cellar, the burning town of Annesburg, the fractured mob empire in Saint Denis, felt millions of miles away.
For this one afternoon, high in the mountains of West Elizabeth, the Underboss was gone. There was only Caleb and Mary-Beth, sharing a picnic under the pines, building a future that was finally within their grasp.
As they enjoyed their time together, the golden afternoon sun filtering through the dense canopy of the ancient pine, a sudden, jarring sensation washed over Caleb. It wasn't a sound or a sight, but a sharp, icy prickle at the base of his skull.
His high Perception stats were tingling violently, an internal alarm bell triggered by the system, reminding him of a coming danger long before a normal man would have sensed anything amiss.
The serene, relaxed posture of the wealthy hotel investor vanished in a microsecond, replaced instantly by the coiled, lethal tension of an apex predator.
He didn't break his warm smile or shift his gaze from Mary-Beth's beautiful face, not wanting to alarm her prematurely, but beneath the surface, his body went rigid.
He immediately had his other hand, the one not holding the piece of bread, drift casually downward. He prepared it, letting his fingers brush against the cold, familiar steel grip of his Navy Revolver, resting smoothly in its oiled leather holster, ready to be taken out at a moment's notice.
The forest around them seemed to hold its breath. The mountain bluebirds abruptly ceased their singing.
And that's when Caleb heard it. The unmistakable, sharp sound of a dry twig snapping under the weight of a heavy boot, coming from the dense brush just ten yards behind where they sat.
In a blur of motion honed by countless gunfights, Caleb dropped the bread and surged to his feet. With one arm, he firmly but gently grabbed Mary-Beth by the shoulder and pulled her, immediately putting Mary-Beth behind him to shield her with his own body.
Simultaneously, his right hand became a striking viper. He drew his Navy Revolver at a moment's notice, the heavy cylinder clicking into place with a menacing, mechanical clack.
He leveled the long barrel of the .36 caliber weapon directly at the thicket where the sound had originated, his stance wide and perfectly balanced.
"I suggest you freeze right where you are," Caleb's voice rang out, cold, hard, and utterly devoid of the warmth it had held seconds prior. He was warning whoever they were to not do anything if they didn't want to die right there in the dirt. "Take another step out of those bushes, and I'll put a hole in you so big the wind will whistle through it."
For a long, tense second, there was only the sound of the breeze rustling the Aspen leaves.
Then, the bushes parted. Caleb saw several men step out into the clearing. There were five of them in total. They were a filthy, ragged bunch, wearing stained dusters, battered hats, and faces completely obscured by weeks of unkempt beard growth and grime.
They smelled strongly of cheap, unwashed sweat, stale tobacco, and bad intentions. They were typical low level highwaymen, the kind of scavengers that preyed on unwary travelers in the mountains.
Instead of showing fear at having a gun drawn on them, the outlaws looked at Caleb's tailored vest, his polished boots, and the pristine picnic spread behind him. They let out dark, gravelly chuckles, highly amused by the situation.
The one standing in the center, a burly man with a jagged scar running down his cheek and a chewed up cigar stump clamped between his yellowed teeth, stepped forward. He was clearly the leader of this miserable pack.
"Well, well, well, lookie what we have here, boys," the leader sneered, his thumbs hooked casually into his gun belt. He looked Caleb up and down with undisguised contempt. "A fancy little city bird, out enjoying the mountain air."
The leader spat a glob of brown tobacco juice onto the pristine emerald moss, deliberately defiling their sanctuary. He looked at the heavy Navy Revolver in Caleb's hand and let out another mocking laugh.
"You better put that heavy iron down, boy, before you hurt yourself," the leader said to him, his voice dripping with arrogant condescension. "Don't do anything bad now. You're just a rich boy in a nice suit. Could you even handle such a kind of weapon? Recoil on a piece like that might just break your delicate little wrists."
The other four outlaws chuckled loudly at that, shifting their weight, their hands hovering confidently near their own holstered cattleman revolvers and worn carbines.
In their eyes, the scenario was clear, Caleb was a wealthy, soft aristocrat playing cowboy to impress his girl. He was completely underestimated by these outlaws who had clearly come to rob them of their money, their jewelry, and their fine horses.
"Last warning," Caleb said, his voice dropping to a terrifyingly calm register. His finger rested lightly on the hair trigger. "Walk away. Now."
"Oh, we ain't walkin' nowhere, dandy," the leader sneered, taking another step into the clearing.
But as the outlaws spread out slightly to flank him, their eyes caught movement behind Caleb's broad shoulders. Mary-Beth, terrified but trying to remain brave, had peeked her head out from behind his back to see what was happening.
The moment the outlaws laid eyes on her, the entire atmosphere in the clearing shifted from a simple robbery to something far darker, far more vile. Seeing how beautiful Mary-Beth was, her flawless skin, her bright eyes, her pristine white blouse, these bunch of outlaws turned instantly lewd. A sickening, predatory hunger replaced the mocking amusement on their filthy faces.
"Lord Almighty, would you look at that?" one of the lackeys, a scrawny man with a missing front tooth, breathed out, licking his cracked lips. "That is the finest piece of calico I ever did see."
"Seems the rich boy brought us a dessert," another outlaw chimed in, letting out a sleazy, high pitched whistle.
They began to tease her, completely ignoring the gun in Caleb's hand, blinded by their own base desires.
"Come on out from behind the dandy, sweetheart," the leader coaxed, his voice turning into a greasy purr as he took another step closer. "You don't need to hide. Why don't you ditch the fancy boy and come show us some hospitality? We've been up in these cold mountains a long time. We could show you what real men feel like."
They even tried to approach her, taking slow, deliberate steps forward, closing the circle. They were becoming more and more lewd, acting like a bunch of rabid perverts who had found a lamb in the woods. One of them made a grotesque, thrusting gesture with his hips, causing the others to howl with laughter.
"I bet she smells like rosewater," the scrawny one snickered, reaching a filthy, mud caked hand out in the air as if trying to grab her from a distance. "I call first dibs when we're done emptyin' the rich boy's pockets!"
Mary-Beth gasped, shrinking back against Caleb, her fingers digging desperately into the back of his shirt.
That was it. The absolute, final line had been crossed.
Caleb could tolerate insults to his own pride. He could tolerate men trying to rob him. But Caleb couldn't stand his woman being done like that, spoken to like a piece of meat by animals who didn't deserve to breathe the same air as her. A cold, absolute fury, vast and terrifying, detonated inside his chest.
He didn't issue another warning. He didn't speak a single word.
Caleb activated his level four Dead Eye Skill.
Instantly, the vibrant greens of the pine trees, the bright blue of the sky, and the golden afternoon sunlight washed away, replaced by a deep, suffocating sepia tone. The rushing sound of the wind through the Aspens slowed into a low, distorted rumble. Time itself seemed to crawl to an agonizing halt. The outlaws, mid laugh and mid step, were frozen like grotesque statues.
Caleb's eyes, cold and merciless, swept across the five men. He moved the heavy Navy Revolver with impossible, supernatural speed. He didn't want the leader dead, he wanted him to watch.
With surgical precision, Caleb painted four glowing, bloody red 'X's in his vision. One directly over the bridge of the scrawny man's nose. One on the throat of the man who had whistled. One dead center in the chest of the third lackey, and one right between the eyes of the fourth.
He deactivated Dead Eye.
Time snapped back to reality with a violent, dizzying rush.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
The four shots roared out of the Navy Revolver in such rapid succession that they sounded almost like a single, elongated explosion of thunder. Fire and grey smoke erupted from the barrel. Caleb executed all of the outlaws except for the leader in the span of a single heartbeat.
...
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: 250,992 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: -