The scorching summer departed like a sultry woman reluctant to leave, swaying her slender waist as she drifted away. Cool autumn arrived quietly, treading upon withered yellow leaves.
Sean stood at The Hand's new base, the Star Ring Building in the heart of Hell's Kitchen. Elektra, dressed in a red-and-black bodysuit, slowly emerged from a partitioned room, carrying two strange weapons known as iron rulers.
Two flushes colored her cold cheeks, as though she had just undergone some intense exercise. Her steady steps were slightly weak, and springlike moisture rippled in her dark eyes.
"While patiently waiting for a lady is a gentleman's basic virtue, you took rather too long to change clothes," Sean said with a soft laugh. He had returned to Hell's Kitchen, this area steeped in chaos and crime, now entirely under The Hand and Wesley's control.
The fierce and savage Russians, the numerous Irish Mob, and the powerful Mexican Drug Cartel had once been Hunters at the top of the food chain. They regarded every block as their own territory and tolerated no outside coveting or intrusion.
But everything changed completely after Kingpin died. At first, they divided up the Black Emperor's illegal businesses and numerous territories. For ownership of a single block, the lower-ranking gangs could fight one another to the death, while the highly profitable trades nearly sparked a bloody storm. If not for their wariness of Wesley, who had risen to power after killing Kingpin, and the watchful The Hand, those gang leaders would already have torn one another apart.
Once those satisfying days of feasting on the great cake had passed, that scheming bastard James Wesley stopped concealing his ambitions. He formed an alliance with The Hand's new leader and declared that Hell's Kitchen's gang forces would be wiped out unless they