Chapter 604

The souls had already been extracted, and the bodies were currently on Moira’s operating table. At this point, there was probably very little left worth calling a body.

But that still left one question unanswered.

Who exactly were these people?

The Eredar twins hadn’t been careless enough to let that detail slip.

"Five fingers brought together to form a hand," Salorathis said. "That was the information those ninjas left behind when they planted their handprints."

Five fingers brought together to form a hand?

Evenson thought about that for a moment.

Actually... that was surprisingly reasonable.

What else were five fingers supposed to form? A claw?

He’d once spent an afternoon idly examining Hubs’s claws, and there was no way those things were closing into a proper hand anytime soon.

"Stop overthinking it," the twins said when they saw his expression. They clearly knew his imagination was already wandering off somewhere ridiculous.

"The Hand."

"Ohhh."

Evenson dragged the realization out dramatically.

"The Hand."

He paused.

"I’ve never really paid attention to them."

That was true. His knowledge of the organization began and ended with the name. He hadn’t forgotten the rest. He’d simply never cared enough to learn it.

"The Hand is a rather old criminal organization," Salorathis explained. "A gang, essentially. Their name is based on the same concept, though depending on how you phrase it, people sometimes refer to them as the Black Hand. Their activities are nothing extraordinary. Assassination, kidnapping, extortion, money laundering, buying politicians, expanding their influence... the usual."

Nothing worth putting on a headline.

Evenson gave a dismissive snort.

His current circle of acquaintances dealt with people who casually talked about saving the world or destroying planets. Even the more conventional supervillains, like Killian, aimed to control the global supply chain and rule from behind the scenes.

Compared to that, an organization whose greatest ambition was apparently making money through criminal enterprise felt positively small-time.

"The Hand has five leaders. They’re collectively known as the Five Fingers, and their identities are highly secretive. Their influence once extended across much of the world, with the majority of their strength concentrated in the East."

Salorathis continued without pause.

"After 1949, however, their eastern operations were almost completely wiped out. What’s left of them has been forced to survive in the West."

"Very thorough."

Evenson applauded.

"Looks like our newly established intelligence network is working beautifully."

He turned toward McNa.

"Tell the cafeteria to give Dottie an extra chicken leg with her lunch tomorrow."

"...Yes, boss."

Evenson was reasonably sure the twins hadn’t divined all this through some mystical alignment of the stars.

Interrogating the souls of the ninjas wouldn’t have helped much either. Those men were little more than disposable operatives sent out to make contact. If they knew the identity of their immediate superior, that was probably the limit of their usefulness.

There was no way men that low in the hierarchy would know the Hand’s global structure in this much detail.

"Dottie really is an excellent intelligence operative," Salorathis said, nodding. "Putting her in charge of the network was the right decision. Her success rate is practically perfect unless she’s going up against Peggy Carter."

She sounded genuinely pleased.

"But our company’s resources are limited. For her to gather this much information in such a short time, someone had to give her a lead."

"A lead?"

Evenson raised an eyebrow.

"Who?"

Olesys smiled.

"They did."

Evenson’s eyes shifted.

A cold little smile appeared on his face.

"They came looking for revenge?"

Apparently, the Hand’s missing operatives hadn’t returned, and someone higher up had finally realized something was wrong.

Bold move.

Very bold.

"Two days ago," Salorathis said.

Surprisingly, there was no trace of irritation in her voice.

"We had two unusual visitors. One was an elderly woman named Gao. I call her Old Lady Gao. She looks like she’s already halfway into the grave."

"The other was a bespectacled man named Wesley. He’s Wilson Fisk’s assistant. You know who he is, right?"

"Vaguely."

Evenson nodded.

"Wilson Fisk. Reclusive businessman in Hell’s Kitchen. Publicly respectable, privately the biggest crime boss in the neighborhood. People on the street call him Kingpin."

Since Evenson ran a business right in the middle of the city, he had enough exposure to the criminal underworld to recognize the important names.

"Correct," Salorathis said. "Although I prefer calling Fisk’s operation a criminal syndicate rather than a gang."

A wicked smile crept onto her face.

"Can you guess why they came?"

Evenson narrowed his eyes.

Something about this clearly wasn’t what it seemed.

Normally, the scene would have been obvious. Two members of the Hand would show up, announce themselves with all the theatrical menace you’d expect, point fingers at the twins, and declare that they’d made a terrible mistake.

Then they’d wind up as experimental material.

Simple.

But if the answer were obvious, there’d be no point in guessing.

Evenson ran through every possibility and came up empty.

It certainly couldn’t be because two disposable operatives had vanished and the people above them had been so terrified that they came crawling over to beg for mercy.

"Were they here to sell us a financial product?"

He made the guess with a straight face.

"Close," Olesys said.

She finally revealed the answer.

"They wanted us to launder their money."

Evenson stared at her.

Then he rolled his eyes.

"Money laundering? With our company?"

He almost laughed.

"We’d be better off robbing them."

"So I assume they were extremely unhappy when you refused?"

"No."

Salorathis’s mouth curved upward.

"Because we agreed."

"What?"

Evenson’s eyes widened.

His jaw dropped so far it looked like it might actually come loose.

"Why would you agree to that?"

Salorathis covered her mouth and laughed softly at his expression.

Evenson immediately reached over and pushed his jaw shut.

"Stop laughing and answer the question. Why would you agree to something like this?"

"Because we get thirty percent."

Olesys delivered the answer with perfect calm.

Thirty percent?

Evenson froze.

That was an absurdly high cut.

Were the Hand so desperate to get rid of their money that they needed someone to help them burn it?

"That much is making me nervous," he said. "Thirty percent is way too generous. Are they trying to set you up?"

One day, the company could receive a large transfer from some apparently unrelated source, happily process it, and then discover that the money trail had already been reported to Washington.

"And there’s another problem."

Evenson frowned.

"Our company has finally gotten itself onto stable footing. We have government backing. Our research may be ethically questionable, but it’s all officially authorized."

He hesitated.

"Mostly."

"It would look even cleaner if you two abandoned some of your less... healthy hobbies."

"The situation is different with Fisk and the Hand. They’re criminals. We’re taking their money and cleaning it. If something goes wrong and we’re investigated, we’re going to have a serious problem."

"If that happens," Olesys replied calmly, "our accountants and lawyers will get sent to Moira’s laboratory."

Her smile was anything but reassuring.

"Relax. The books are immaculate."

She folded her arms.

"We structured the transactions as stock purchases with scheduled dividends. Legally, everything we’re doing is protected."

"But—"

Evenson still wasn’t convinced.

"You can’t spend your entire life walking along the riverbank without eventually getting your shoes wet. If their operation collapses, they could drag us down with them."

"They won’t."

Olesys shook her head.

"Fisk is the underground king of Hell’s Kitchen. The police, prosecutors, even the courts are practically his territory. He’s also learned from Al Capone’s mistakes."

She smiled.

"He pays his taxes."

"Unlike certain people."

She looked directly at Evenson.

"Fisk has never stolen a penny from the IRS. Unless some masked vigilante puts him through a wall, he’s not going anywhere."

"And even if he does fall, the people willing to take the major charges for him could probably form an entire platoon. Fisk has arranged things so carefully that he can keep his distance from almost everything."

"At worst, he’d spend a few years in prison on extortion charges."

She leaned back.

"He has absolutely no reason to betray us."

Olesys’s eyes narrowed slightly.

"More importantly..."

"He wouldn’t dare."

Evenson rubbed his nose.

"Wouldn’t dare?"

He looked from one twin to the other.

"What exactly did you show him?"

"Nothing."

Olesys smiled pleasantly.

"We just sat down and had a conversation."

Hell’s Kitchen.

Just hearing the name was enough to understand that this was one of the roughest corners of New York.

But even Hell’s Kitchen had wealthy neighborhoods, and among them stood a particular mansion that inspired more rumors than most.

It belonged to Wilson Fisk.

Kingpin.

The man himself was enormous—a broad, bald giant whose thick frame might have suggested obesity at first glance.

It didn’t.

There was too much strength in the way he carried himself. Every movement looked deliberate, controlled, powerful.

At the moment, Fisk was sitting inside an elegant, understated tea room.

Across from him sat an elderly woman with weathered skin, liver spots across her face, a hunched back, white hair, and a walking cane resting against her chair.

Fisk’s expression was serious.

"Madam Gao, how did things end up like this?"

His words carried a hint of reproach.

His tone did not.

He was respectful—almost excessively so.

Madam Gao lifted her cup, took a small sip, and asked in an almost leisurely voice,

"Like what?"

"We approached the company because we wanted them to launder our money, didn’t we?"

"There was just one problem," Fisk said.

His voice trembled slightly.

"At the beginning, the maximum commission we agreed to was three percent."

He swallowed.

"Not thirty."

Thirty percent.

He’d have to hand over three million dollars for every ten million they processed.

That was practically highway robbery.

He’d rather leave the money sitting in a vault forever than give these people thirty percent of it.

Madam Gao lowered her teacup.

"What choice did I have?"

Her expression was filled with weary resignation.

"If I hadn’t offered them such a large piece of the pie, do you think Wesley and I would have walked out of there alive?"

Her eyes narrowed.

"I saw it clearly. The moment those women lifted a finger, we would have been reduced to dust."

She sighed.

"So thirty percent seemed like a reasonable price for leaving in one piece."