Looking out of the window of the SUV that had picked her up from the airport, Ronda found herself wondering where the hell she was being taken. The city was long since behind them, and all she could see now was rural countryside. It was definitely a good thing that WWE were responsible for her travel arrangements, she thought, glad that she didn't have to navigate her way around these roads in the ass end of nowhere. The black SUV with tinted windows that she was traveling in definitely didn't fit in with the beaten up pickup trucks and farm vehicles that mad up the bulk of the traffic traveling in the opposite direction.

"Are we nearly there yet?" she asked the driver from the back seat, not realising how much she sounded like a little kid on her way to a vacation.

"A couple more minutes, ma'am," the driver replied politely, glancing at the satnav display.

"Where are we going, anyway?"

"The address I have is for a warehouse, ma'am."

That made sense, Ronda admitted to herself. If her kidnapping at the hands of Elena had been real, a deserted warehouse in the middle of nowhere would have been a good location for her captor to keep her locked away.

Shortly, the SUV pulled onto a gravel parking area and stopped. Not standing on ceremony, Ronda didn't bother waiting for the driver to open the door. That kind of officiousness irritated her. Climbing out of the vehicle, she saw that the driver's use of the word warehouse had conjured up the wrong kind of image in her head. She had pictured some kind of huge place that would have been full of shipping containers when it was in use, but the reality was closer to the opposite end of the scale. The building she saw in front of her looked more like a former auto repair shop, or maybe somewhere that a farmer had used to park his tractors. There was a single steel door to get into the place, with a much larger roller shutter door that could be opened to get vehicles in or out. Exactly how WWE had managed to come up with this up as a filming location, she couldn't begin to imagine.

Three WWE production crew members, two men and a woman, had been standing nearby, drinking coffee while they chatted with Elena D'Agostino, who was also working on a coffee of her own. Elena had started walking over when she saw the SUV arrive. "Hey, Ronda," the Italian said with a pleasant smile. "How are you?"

"Daga. I'm good, you?"

"Great. Ready to terrorise you some more," she added with a mischievous grin. "There's coffee in the van over there if you want some."

A white van was parked on the other side of the small graveled area, with it's side door slid open. Elena's hire car was parked next to it. It was the same model and colour as the one she'd had at Raw the week before, Ronda realised. Continuity had been thought about at least. She and Elena had both remembered to dress in the same clothes they had been wearing the week before when she had been abducted. The first scene they filmed was supposed to have happened the previous Monday night, or more accurately the following morning, she realised, as it was obviously now light outside. Silly, needless errors which broke kayfabe like an incorrect change of clothes or night becoming day without explanation always triggered Ronda. Being a perfectionist wasn't easy at times.

"Have you brought other clothes to change into?" she asked Elena, who had walked over to the van with her.

"I brought another jacket. Only my jacket and jeans will be seen, so that's enough to make it look like some time has gone by between the scenes."

"And how are we going to deal with the fact that it's light outside? Is it supposed to be Tuesday morning when we arrive here?"

"Yes. I will make sure to say something about driving all through the night to make that clear."

"Good. And for the later scenes, they're going to use makeup on me to make it look like I've been shut up in this place for a week or whatever." Ronda took one of the cheap plastic cups that was on offer and poured some coffee into it from a thermos flask. It was hardly going to be top quality coffee, but it would have to do. There was also a coolbox in there, which she presumed contained cans of soda or bottles of water for later. The sun was already beating down and there was hardly a cloud in the sky. The place would soon become a real heat trap, meaning that coffee wouldn't be the order of the day later.

"Yes." Elena paused while Ronda's driver fired up the SUV's powerful engine. One of the crew members had asked him to go park up around the back of the warehouse so that his vehicle was out of the way when they started filming. Its wheels kicked up dust as it pulled away, but thankfully the wind blew it in the opposite direction. "I was thinking about how you should be tied up, Ronda. Tape might work for a while in the trunk, but to keep you here for a week? That would take something stronger."

"Just how much have you been thinking about tying me up?" Ronda asked, raising an eyebrow slightly.

"I thought about it a lot," Elena said, missing the humour in the question. Another slight language barrier related problem, Ronda realised. "We are both perfectionists, yes? Are we going to do it right or wrong?"

"We're going to do it right, of course. Tell me what you have in mind," Ronda encouraged her friend.

Elena turned and reached into the van, rummaging around through the cameras and other equipment. "I sent Hunter a message and had them bring some things I wanted." She emerged a moment later holding three lengths of rope, two relatively short lengths and a much longer one, and a pair of handcuffs.

"Christ," Ronda said, unable not to smile. She had known going in that Elena wouldn't hold back on her with this storyline - she never held back on anything while she was in character, whether it was in the ring or out.

Elena held up some of the longer length of rope. "This is one is to make the, uh, I forget the word."

"The noose idea I suggested? To threaten to hang me if Seth doesn't agree to Cesaro's demands?"

"Yes," Elena replied, looking slightly downcast for a moment. "My English is bad."

"No it's not," Ronda assured her. "For a second language, in a country that you've lived in for a couple of years or whatever, I think you're doing great. Sure, you can improve, and you will, but you don't need get down about it."

"I should have tried harder to learn English in school."

One of the two male crew members walked over towards them, intruding on the rather strange moment as Ronda wondered just how insecure Elena really was about her spoken English. It was certainly the first time she had heard her friend lack confidence. Something to bring up again in private, she decided.

"Morning, Ronda," the crew member said, polite and professional. Ronda figured that she should probably have known the guy's name. She had seen him around backstage plenty of times.

"Morning. Are we ready to go?"

"Yeah, as soon as you've had your coffee. We've got an overview of the scenes we need to get done. First of all, we need you in the trunk of the car, the way you were Monday night."

Ronda downed the rest of her hot drink in one hit, consciously telling herself not to give a sarcastic response. These people were just here to do a job, and besides, she had agreed to this whole idea when Hunter had pitched it to her. "Alright, I'm ready when you are. Can you do something with this?" She handed her empty plastic cup to him like it was the most natural thing in the world to do.

"You've not changed your mind about me kissing you?" Elena asked as she threw the ropes and handcuffs back into the van. They were not needed yet.

"No. I mean, it's not like you're going to have your tongue in my mouth or anything. It's just a way for your character to torment mine, and that's the whole point of this thing. Well, that and you getting your ass kicked at the end of it, obviously."

"Obviously. And I really do need an ass kicking for this. We need to work on spots for that match."

"We will, closer to the time," Ronda said, noticing that the two male crew members were now fiddling around with their cameras.

The female member of the team, who definitely didn't look familiar to Ronda, walked over to them. Maybe she usually worked on NXT or something? She was younger than the two men, and much shorter too. The way she kept her dark hair made Ronda think that she looked a bit like a pixie, not that it was a negative thing - the look actually suited her. She had a nervous smile on her face as she approached.

"Hi, Ronda, it's great to meet you. My name's Alice. I'm going to be directing today." She offered her hand.

"Alice. I haven't seen you around before," Ronda said, accepting the handshake.

"I usually work on NXT, but today Hunter assigned me to this. It's a big deal for me, so I'm hoping it goes well."

Ronda grinned. "Translated, you mean you've heard I can be difficult to work with and you don't want me to fuck you around on your big day."

Alice looked taken aback for a moment, then risked a smile of her own. "Yeah, that's what I'm saying."

Ronda laughed heartily at that. She liked the woman already. In her opinion, the world needed more people with that kind of attitude. "Alice, let me tell you something. The people who find me hard to work with are the people I don't have respect for, and the people who fuck me around and get on my nerves. So how about we make a deal: You don't fuck me around, I won't fuck you around."

"Sounds good," Alice said. After glancing over at the two men who working for her for the day, she cleared her throat. "Looks like they're almost set. The first thing we need to film is Elena arriving here with you still locked in the trunk." She went on to describe exactly what was to happen in the scene.

Elena had walked over to the van and then returned to stand beside Ronda while they had been talking. Holding up a industrial sized roll of silver duct tape, she gave Ronda one of her character's nasty little smiles. "Duct tape time."

"Can't wait," Ronda said dryly as she lead the way over to Elena's car. "Alright, open the trunk."

After unlocking the car with the button on the key fob, Elena popped the trunk and Ronda sat down on the edge of it. The Italian walked around to the back of the car and crouched down in front of her on-screen victim.

"Ankles first, Ronda. It feels strange to do this to my friend."

"So if it was one of the others you would be okay with it?"

Elena looked up at her and gave a knowing smile. "One or two I could tie up and set fire to the car."

"That's why I like you, Daga. You call things the way they are. I could think of a person or two I wouldn't mind getting rid of, too. Maybe we should go on a killing spree at some point?"

"Guys, I'm sorry, but can we please get started?" Alice asked, walking over to them. "WWE only rented this place for one day. I don't want to run out of time if we have to do re-takes and things."

"Sorry," Elena said, then got to work taping Ronda's ankles together. While she was doing that, one of the crew members fired up the van in order to move it out of sight behind the building.

"Rented it for a day?" Ronda asked. "Rented from who? Look at it, the place is a shit hole."

Elena glanced up at Alice. "Want me to do her mouth next? We'll be here all day, especially if she starts complaining."

Ronda gave her a withering look. "You should do my wrists first if you're going to talk like that, or we'll be spending the day in the ER instead."

"Your wish is my command." Ankles secured, Elena got back up. "Turn around and I'll do your wrists."

"Okay." Ronda turned to sit sideways on the back of the car so that Elena could easily work on her wrists. Within moments, her shoulders were wrenched back into the uncomfortable position and her wrists were secured tightly together, thankfully not quite tight enough to restrict circulation this time, not that pride would have allowed her to complain about it if that had happened.

"Now your mouth." Elena pulled more tape from the roll and stuck it to Ronda's cheek, then wrapped it twice around her head.

Ronda couldn't help a slight moan of discomfort as she tested the tightness of it for the first time, feeling her cheeks being constricted and her eyes forced open slightly wider than usual. Again, she reminded herself that she wasn't supposed to look comfortable in the scenes that they were filming.

After stuffing the roll of tape in her jacket pocket, Elena got up off the back of the car. "Are you okay? Can you breathe?"

"Mmm Hmm," Ronda acknowledged, nodding slightly.

"Good. Lie down and we'll get going."

Awkwardly, Ronda got herself into the most comfortable position she could, lying on her side. Elena closed the lid, and everything went dark. A real kidnap victim would be scared to death in these circumstances, she thought, shuddering at the thought. The engine started up and she felt Elena backing out of her parking spot. It was time to begin.