Land of Shadows (1.02) Shadow of the Black Hand

[Stormm]

The water, splashed into his face, woke him from unconsciousness. His vision still blurry, could barely make out the shapes of three individuals, one on either side, and the third right in front of him. Justin was hanging by shackled wrists, the chains hanging him up enough to only just let his tip-toes touch the floor.

It was dimly lit in what appeared, to him, to be an unfinished basement floor of a newly constructed building. He could have been in an unfamiliar locale, or the haze he was fighting just wasn’t letting him recognize his surroundings.

Swinging back and forth, trying to keep his toes on the ground to stabilize himself, and keep the weight off his wrists that the shackles had worn raw while he was out, Justin tried to shake the cobwebs loose. The three men spoke in Chinese back and forth while he continued to come to his senses. While he couldn’t speak the languages, nor understand full conversations, Justin could still understand some Cantonese, and Mandarin, as well as the Japanese language from his time wrestling in Japan in his late teens and early twenties.

“Dāngrán, lǎobǎn.” The man to his left agreed with a quick bow, and scurried off

“Shì de zhǔrén!” The man to his right quickly followed suit to the first.

While most of their conversation had gone over his groggy head, one word in particular had stuck out to him. “Master, huh?” He said, with his usual tone, before wincing in pain. While he couldn’t check for certain with his hands bound, he was fairly certain his head, where he’d taken a shot to knock him out, was bleeding. “That some sort of sex talk?”

“Still an ignorant asshole, I see.” While the man’s English was spoken very well, he still had an extremely thick Asian accent, but to Justin, it sounded more Japanese than Chinese. “But it is nice to see that you are well, all things considered.”

The taste of blood quickly overcame him. An effect of the first attempts to wake him, he wondered, and a mouthful of red was quickly discharged onto the floor next to his captor, who was still coming into focus. “As much as I’d like to say the same,” Justin gathers himself as he continues to adjust to a position that puts him in the least amount of pain. “I’d rather be out of these bindings bashing your head on the concrete.”

A sadistic laugh emanates from the Asian man dressed in a well-tailored, black suit. “You obviously do not remember the last time we squared-off, do you?” A quick backhand from the man to Justin’s face sends him off-balance again, but clears the fog from his head, and the man comes cleary into view for him. “You said I would never breath fire, but plenty of people have burned since then!”

“Kinzo?” Justin questioned with wide eyes.

...Shadow of the (Real) Black Hand...

Obviously, some of what I’m going to tell you both, I’ sure you’re already figured out. We know you’re not stupid, and have probably been waiting for a while for us to stop lying to you guys. It’s a bullshit thing to say, I know, but just wait until you have kids, you’ll realize just how much you’d do to protect them.

Dusk had set in. The wondrous reds, oranges, and purples begin to stretch across the sky as the city lights outside of Justin’s office windows began to light the world below. Atlanta would not rest for several hours, and neither would he.

Working hard and digging into the books left behind by the company’s deceased Chief Financial Officer, Ted Leary, to find out where a large chunk of the profits had disappeared to. Justin’s friend and current Chief Executive Office, Brian McCallister, was in his office at the other side of the floor doing exactly the same.

That had gone on for a couple weeks.

Theodore Leary was one of the best money guys that either Justin or Brian had met over the years, and they had been lucky to have him for the past eight years since the company went public. So for him to have shuffled that much money around, and covered his tracks made no sense to either of them. It wasn’t until they heard the news that his death wasn’t a suicide, and that his wife had gone missing, that they realized that outside forces had something to do with it.

Who those outside forces were, they couldn’t even begin to fathom

The duo had spent most of their days, and nights, at the office, sorting through years worth of records to try and figure out how and why Ted would have done such a thing, and to try and find out where the money went.

While Brian had been succeeding in his position as CEO, Justin continued to be Chairman of the Board, and even with the company growing up over the years and not needing him as much as it used to, it would still be his baby, and something like this was more than deserving of his attention.

I’m sure you remember me talking all about my North American title match against Dominator, and yeah, you both rolling your eyes says it all. I hadn’t gotten a chance to prepare for that match like any of the high profile matches that I had wrestled before. Your Uncle Brian and I had been trying to figure out what had caused a mess in the office for weeks when I realized I had other things I needed to do. The thing is, I never made it to his office to say anything.

Therein lie the problem. Justin was stretching himself too thin, trying to commit to so many important causes, he was unfortunately neglecting some of those for others. While stepping back into “Suit and Tie” Justin for the past month, he hadn’t spent much time in the shoes of “Force of Nature” Justin. While real life implications of Ted’s death warranted the time spent digging into it, there was a large man waiting to tear the man called Stormm to pieces if he wasn’t ready for him.

The ninth run of Mass Destruction, Pure Class Wrestling’s premier pay-per-view, was days away, and Justin hadn’t spent near the time in the gym that he normally would leading up to a big match like this. Big on multiple counts. Not only was a North American title reign, spanning over four hundred, hanging in the balance, his well-being could be too.

Dominator had ten inches and a little over a hundred pounds on Stormm. Add on another one fifty or so for that tumor they call Mortimer, and the odds for anyone to go one on one with the Zenith did not look good. While the Force of Nature had gone tit-for-tat with him in the mind game department, that was only a part of the game they all played, and the realization that, he might not be ready to defend his title, had started to sink in with all those numbers floating over head.

But there was still that part of him that couldn’t fully let go of Havoc Entertainment. Even if the company hadn’t actually gone by that name in almost eight years in favor of the now, and more professionally mature, Action Entertainment, named after their flagship wrestling promotion, AE. Brian had officially been CEO since that time as well, but even he, at times, couldn’t let go of Justin running the show. There would be a part of both of them that would always see the company as Havoc Entertainment, and their headquarters in Atlanta would never stop being HavocHQ to them.

But as the clock ticked past eight, nine, ten, eleven, and neared midnight, Justin, after spending a bulk of the last year trying to separate his duties, his lives, to alleviate most of the burden he had felt for nearly twenty years, decided to put his foot down.

Neatly stacking a mountain of papers from his desk, he placed them into a company branded, leather bound folder, stood up, and started to make his way towards the door.

However, and to this day he still isn’t sure what exactly what happened, the lights in the office flickered on and off. This process repeated itself half a dozen times, with each of his steps, and the last thing he remembers after that is reaching for the handle on the door before everything went black.

So let me tell you about The Black Hand, and not the one that left branded merchandise in your cribs as babies, the REAL Black Hand. Wrestling matches with monsters, murdered financial officers, it all pales in comparison to the shit that follows them around, and I was about to meet them for the first time; giving me a whole new outlook on what it meant to be a parent.

The water, splashed into his face, woke him from unconsciousness. His vision still blurry, could barely make out the shapes of three individuals, one on either side, and the third right in front of him. Justin was hanging by shackled wrists, the chains hanging him up enough to only just let his tip-toes touch the floor.

It was dimly lit in what appeared, to him, to be an unfinished basement floor of a newly constructed building. He could have been in an unfamiliar locale, or the haze he was fighting just wasn’t letting him recognize his surroundings.

Swinging back and forth, trying to keep his toes on the ground to stabilize himself, and keep the weight off his wrists that the shackles had worn raw while he was out, Justin tried to shake the cobwebs loose. The three men spoke in Chinese back and forth while he continued to come to his senses. While he couldn’t speak the languages, nor understand full conversations, Justin could still understand some Cantonese, and Mandarin, as well as the Japanese language from his time wrestling in Japan in his late teens and early twenties.

“Dāngrán lǎobǎn.” The man to his left agreed with a quick bow, and scurried off

“Shi zhǔ!” The man to his right quickly followed suit to the first.

While most of their conversation had gone over his groggy head, one word in particular had stuck out to him. “Master, huh?” He said, with his usual tone, before wincing in pain. While he couldn’t check for certain with his hands bound, he was fairly certain his head, where he’d taken a shot to knock him out, was bleeding. “That some sort of sex talk?”

“Still an ignorant asshole, I see.” While the man’s English was spoken very well, he still had an extremely thick Asian accent, but to Justin, it sounded more Japanese than Chinese. “But it is nice to see that you are well, all things considered.”

The taste of blood quickly overcame him. An effect of the first attempts to wake him, he wondered, and a mouthful of red was quickly discharged onto the floor next to his captor, who was still coming into focus. “As much as I’d like to say the same,” Justin gathers himself as he continues to adjust to a position that puts him in the least amount of pain. “I’d rather be out of these bindings bashing your head on the concrete.”

A sadistic laugh emanates from the Asian man dressed in a well-tailored, black suit. “You obviously do not remember the last time we squared-off, do you?” A quick backhand from the man to Justin’s face sends him off-balance again, but clears the fog from his head, and the man comes cleary into view for him. “You said I would never breath fire, but plenty of people have burned since then!”

“Kinzo?” Justin questioned with wide eyes. “You know that was a bit, right?” Reflecting on a feud he’d had with another young man, back in his time wrestling in Japan. “I don’t even remember what kind of racist shit you said about me, but we were playing characters!”

“You buried my career!” The Japanese man, now recognized as Kinzo Yoshida, a former wrestler, and one time acquaintance from Stormm’s time in Tokyo Underground, shrieked. “I never wrestled again!”

Spitting out another mouthful of blood, Justin chuckled. “So, what, you’re some big-time gangbanger now, and have come back for revenge?”

“Wrestling got me out of that line of work, and thanks to you, put me back out there. How lucky for me that the Hēishǒu came along and rescued me.”

Raising an eyebrow, out of curiosity more than anything, Justin decided to ask. “Hei… Heish… Hēishǒu?”

Unimpressed with Justin’s attempts to mimic his accent, and stuttering act at pronouncing his organizations name, Kinzo still obliges and answers. “The Black Hand.” Those three words took Justin’s breath away, and his eyes widened. “You’ve heard of us?” Kinzo questioned.

“The little dragon went big time.” Calling back to the derogatory nickname that he’d carried with him in the wrestling days, Kinzo just smiled as he’d embraced the name long ago. “Never knew the hand to kill anyone like you did Ted, or get this hostile with their kidnapping.”

“Then I guess you haven’t actually come across the real Hand yet.” Getting into Justin’s face, Kinzo smiled. “Sure, there used to be some with different ideals that broke away from us, and try to spread fear by using our name, but they are nothing more than a false hand, and we don’t concern ourselves with their affairs anymore.” Justin’s eyes were moving side to side at a rapid rate, trying to take it all in as Kinzo started to pace. “That all happened before either of us were born anyway.”

“So that means…” Justin murmured.

Stopping in front of his hostage, Kinzo answered the question before Justin could ask it. “It means you’re one of very few lucky people to have been in the grasp of both hands of the severed beast, and even less that will have walked away on their own.”

One of the lackeys from before walked in an interrupted. “Xiǎolóng?”

“Wǒ shuōle shénme?” Kinzo was not interested in what the man had to say and sent him back on his way.


“Bàoqiàn!” Apologizing, he exited as quickly as he’d entered.

“So where am I? Some dungeon in Japan somewhere?” Justin asked, assuming he’d been kept unconscious for an international flight to be tortured overseas.

Laughing, Kinzo shook his head, and began to pace again, trying to make Justin even more uncomfortable than he already was, despite telling him he would be walking away on his own. “Because I am Japanese, you assume we have to be a Japanese based organization? We operate anywhere we want to, and I have men in as many countries as you can name.” Sucking in a mouthful of air between his teeth, Yoshia scratches his chin, and continues. “And I would never take you to Qin-Lai and set you free. No, you are still in your precious eyesore of a building.”

Taking a few more looks around, Justin still didn’t recognize the floor of his building that he was on, and immediately felt bad for being so disconnected from his company, despite having exactly the opposite feelings before being knocked out. “So you came all the way here to kidnap me, and what, take my company from me?”

Wearing thin on the leader of the so-called real Black Hand, Kinzo let out a heavy sigh. “Justin, we already have your company, and I’ve been in this hellhole since we took care of Ted, who threatened to take it back from us. Action Entertainment has been ours since you went public.” He affirmed. “I want to keep you alive so you can watch me take everything from you, like you took everything from me. Oh, and in case you decide to be, well, yourself, just know that we’re everywhere.”

Pulling out a phone from the packet inside of his suit jacket, Kinzo started a call. “Lindsay has been really busy with the Havoc Foundation as of late, so, what’s her name, Izzy, has been spending a lot of time with the children, hasn’t she?”

“You wouldn’t?” A single tear rolled down the right side of Justin’s face as the worst fear he’s ever felt filled his entire body.

“Bǎ qízhōng yīgè dǎkāi.” Kinzo spoke over the phone before placing it on speaker.

“Daddy?!” A little girl’s voice echoed through the construction zone.

“Remi?!” His lips trembled and his voice cracked.

Disconnecting the call, Kinzo got back in Justin’s face. “Stop looking into us, you’ll never find where the money is. Stop looking for Ted’s wife, she’s gone. And convince those detectives that he killed himself, because they will never find us, and will die trying!”

Before he could respond, the Little Dragon snapped his fingers, and just like before, Justin was knocked out cold.

It was like nothing I’d ever dealt with before, and to this day, have been lucky enough to not have to deal with again. It took a long time to figure out how to get out of their grasp, and I sometimes still have nightmares about what would have happened to you, to all of us, if I hadn’t.