Sherriff Deville had been less than thrilled by the request to allow Hunter to meet Roman Reigns in one of her police station's cells, but she had gone along with it. She hadn't needed to say that she expected her palm to be greased with a considerable sum of cash in return in the not too distant future.
"Half an hour, max," Deville said when she finished leading Hunter to the cell in question, having met him at the building's rear entrance, which was supposed to be for staff only.
The door to the cell stood open. Inside, Reigns was sitting on the bed, waiting with an impatient look on his face. "Hunter," he said, making eye contact with his adversary.
A wooden chair had been left in the cell by Deville so that both men could sit while they talked. Hunter sat down, deliberately not offering a handshake. "Roman," he said coldly.
Deville closed the cell door on them, but didn't lock it. "Any violence, I'll arrest the pair of you," she warned before walking away.
"Before you say anything, I want to repeat what I said on the phone," Roman said. "I gave an order that Ronda was not to be harmed, and I regret what happened to her."
"You regret it," Hunter said quietly, fuming about what had been done to his baby girl. "I don't care if you regret it or not. You're responsible for it. It was you who put her in that position. You put her in the care of that piece of shit we killed."
"Dean," Roman snapped. "One of my longest serving men, and a friend."
"And a sexual abuser of women," Hunter added menacingly.
Roman sighed impatiently. "You called this meeting, Hunter. You want payback for what happened, that much is obvious. Why don't we get to the fucking point?"
"You're damn right I want payback. You'd know I was lying if I said I didn't want to kill you after what Ronda went through. But killing you would mean a war, with pretty much everyone on both sides likely to be killed. That doesn't serve either of our interests."
"Agreed," Roman said. With the way things had played out, he knew he was going to have to make some kind of sacrifice to keep the peace. He had made a play on Helmsley, and it hadn't come off.
"I want two million dollars, and it's not negotiable."
Roman's cheek twitched in anger. "Two million dollars?" he asked, his voice almost a growl.
"You should have sent Ronda home," Hunter said, his fists clenched as he pictured the way he had found his daughter taped up on the bed when he had rescued her. "You should have sent her home, and it would have been a big gesture of goodwill between us. But you chose not to, and that's a decision you're going to pay for. Think yourself lucky you're paying with money, not blood."
"If I pay this money, this whole thing goes away?" Roman asked.
"This will never go away. Ronda will never forget what she went through, and I'll never forget it either. But there can be peace between us. So what's it to be?"
Roman took a long moment to think it over. When he reached his decision, he stood up. "I'll need some time to get that amount together in cash."
Hunter stood up also. Due to the confines of the cell, it put them almost nose to nose. "You've got a week."
Giving no response, Reigns pulled the cell door open and calmly left. Hunter was left standing in the cell, wondering how he hadn't beaten the guy to a pulp right then and there. That kind of restraint was vital in his line of work. That was something he had to continue trying to teach Ronda ahead of whenever the time came for her to take charge of the Helmsley empire. Right now, that was a distant consideration, though. What mattered more was that Reigns was playing right into his hands.
Becky had been in a bad mood all day. In fact she had been in a bad mood the day before as well, ever since being spoken to like dirt by Kevin Owens.
"Becks, I wish you would snap out of it," Bayley pleaded. She was lying on the bed they shared in their room in the Helmsley mansion. Becky was sitting in a chair near the window, looking out of it without really looking out of it.
Becky didn't want to upset her girlfriend, but she couldn't just snap out of her mood. She was nearing the end of her rope. "I've had enough, Bay," she said, turning to face the bed. "We're cooped up here in this stupid room, pretty much like prisoners. We've been beaten up. We're spoken to like we're the lowest form of scum. I can't deal with it. I really can't deal with it."
Bayley moved to sit on the edge of the bed. From there she was able to take Becky's hand and squeeze it. "We're alive. We could have been killed by Mr Helmsley. We could have been killed by Ronda. We still would be killed by Mr Reigns if he had half a chance. I'm not willing to believe he hasn't figured out we're the ones who led to Ronda being rescued. Despite the odds, we're alive, and we're together. The Helmsley's are angry with us. They're not going to treat us like this for ever."
Becky grunted a laugh. "I wish I had your confidence. I don't know what plans Hunter has for us, but I'm sure none of them involve respecting us the way he does the rest of his people. I have to say something to him because I can't live like this. I agreed to work for him, not to be kept in a room for the rest of my life."
"We need to be careful, Becks," Bayley said hesitantly. "I don't want him to get angry and throw us out on the street. We can't forget that we're here for our safety. Please just give it some time. Things are still kind of crazy. Let's keep our heads down and ride out the storm, please?" she implored her lover.
Becky didn't look happy about it, but she relented. "Okay, we'll handle it your way."
Only a few minutes later, their bedroom door opened. Ronda was standing in the doorway. As usual, there was a glare on her face. This time it seemed less angry and vicious than usual though, Becky noticed.
"Come with me," Ronda said. Mindful of what her dad wanted to see from her, she had determined herself to try and treat her two underlings a bit better. It would look bad on her if Becky and Bayley did something stupid like escape the Helmsley mansion. They were to be trusted with learning to cook meth, which meant they had to be loyal to Helmsley. And to be loyal, they had to feel respected.
"Where are we going?" Becky asked irritably as she stood up.
"To start your training for your new job. So you don't have to be stuck in here all day anymore."
Bayley looked at Becky, trying to send positive vibes. She had picked up on the shift towards the positive in Ronda's attitude, and wanted Becky to respond in kind.
"What's the job?" Becky asked.
"How are you at chemistry?" Ronda responded.
Becky and Bayley glanced at each other in confusion.
"I don't know anything about it," Becky admitted.
"I was good at it in school, but I never studied it further. I was more into computers," Bayley said.
"Well, you're going to start studying it further today," Ronda said before gesturing towards the stairs with her head. "Come on, let's go."
The fact that Helmsley made their money from meth was no secret to either Bayley or Becky. There was only one reason Bayley could think of for Ronda to be mentioning chemistry. "We're going to your meth lab?" she asked, following her new boss along the landing.
"Yes, you are." Ronda stopped and turned to confront them. "And that means you'll know the location of it. To be clear, if you even think of divulging that little piece of information to anyone, we'll have you skinned alive, and we'll find your families and do the same to them as well."
"Alright, I've had enough of this shit," Becky said, getting fired up, much to Bayley's horror.
"Who the fuck do you think you're talking to?" Ronda snarled, squaring up to her.
"I'm talking to you," Becky said, not backing down. "You're mad at us for what happened. I get it. But it wasn't our fault you were in that house when we got there. And don't forget that you wouldn't have been rescued if it wasn't for us. We came here, to your old man. He offered us protection, and then he asked us to work for you. We pledged our loyalty and agreed to do whatever was asked of us, and we will. What I'm not going to do is continue to be treated and spoken to like a worthless piece of shit, and I'm not going to have Bay treated that way either."
Bayley braced herself for the worse, expecting Becky receive another serious beating for standing up to Ronda. Shockingly, the opposite happened. Ronda seemed almost to approve. "So there's a backbone in there somewhere," she said. "Fair enough. I've made it clear where you stand, and you've made your point. Come on, there's work to do. Let's see you prove you deserve some respect."
With a look at Bayley that said, 'I think that went well,' Becky started following Ronda to the stairs again, more willingly this time.
It took Bayley another second to get going. She couldn't quite believe what had just happened. Becky had always had a fiery side to her, and it seemed like Ronda kind of appreciated that. Whatever works, so long as she's off our backs, Bayley thought as she hurried to catch up.
Entering the enormous Helmsley food procession factory by one of the rear entrances, Becky and Bayley looked around. They saw rows of conveyor belts and machinery, with people working as operatives. Other people were packing food into boxes of various kinds. All of the staff were wearing orange overalls and white hair nets. They mostly seemed to be oriental women. Cheap labour, Bayley thought.
Ronda wasn't hanging around for her employees to look around. She was on her way up one side of the factory floor. Becky and Bayley rushed to follow her before they were noticed lingering behind.
Approaching one of the packing stations, Bayley noticed one of the two women working there hit a button to stop the conveyor that was carrying some kind of cakes. Without needing to be ordered, the two women hurriedly cleared their station. When they were done, one of them pressed two other buttons simultaneously. With a loud whirring noise, the whole assembly began to tilt upwards. It stopped at about forty five degrees, revealing an opening underneath, where Bayley could see a flight of metal steps descending underground. The entrance to the meth lab was expertly hidden, as it had to be.
"Down you go," Ronda instructed, waiting for them to go before her.
Becky led the way, with Bayley just behind her. Once they had descended the first short flight of steps, Ronda banged a red button on the wall with her fist and the entrance started to close behind them. There was also a green button there, presumably to open the entrance from this side. Above the buttons there was a red light and a green light. The green one was currently illuminated, in addition to the dim lighting above the steps.
"This is the entrance and the primary exit," Ronda said. "If the light is green, the coast is clear to leave. If for any reason it's not safe to leave, those guys up there push a button and the light goes red."
"Red light means we stay down here. Got it," Becky said.
Procedure explained, Ronda followed them down several more short flights of steps that looped back on each other. They were going a long way underground. At the bottom was a heavy airtight door with a small round window in it. The door was locked with a numerical keypad, into which Ronda typed a six digit code. She showed no interest in divulging the code. Instead, she held the door open, waiting for her employees to enter.
As soon as the door was opened, Becky felt a cool draft of air on her face. It had a particularly unpleasant smell of chemicals to it, which was hardly a surprise.
Walking into the lab, the two newcomers found themselves on a metal balcony. Walking to the railing, they were able to look down into the lab itself. Bayley had no idea what any of the equipment she was looking at was apart from the extractor which took fumes up into a large pipe that disappeared into the ceiling. Somewhere, it was presumably mixed in with other fumes before being vented out of the factory's roof.
Working on the far side of the room there were two people in yellow hazmat suits, black boots and black rubber gloves. Protection was clearly needed while cooking meth. Again, that wasn't a surprise. The chemicals used were toxic, it was safe to assume.
"That's the finished product," Becky observed, spying several large packages of the distinctive and unique light green colour that she knew was Helmsley's brand. For drug addicts, Helmsley's shit was the best, so she had heard.
"Yeah, that's it," Ronda said, moving to stand next to her. "That's half a shipment there. Once the other half is done, it'll be boxed up in those cardboard boxes you see stacked up over there. They're the same ones we use upstairs for ice cream and yoghurt products."
Ronda pointed to a row of four freezers against one wall. "Ice cream or yoghurt is taken from those freezers and put into the boxes, with the meth in the middle."
She pointed to the back of the room. "Then it's loaded onto that conveyor, which ends up taking it upstairs."
"And from there it finds itself into one of your trucks. One or two boxes among hundreds. Practically impossible to find, even if someone decided to search the right truck," Bayley said, admiring the setup.
"Smart girl," Ronda said with a hint of her own admiration.
"Who are they?" a man's voice asked from, muffled by the respirator mask that was part of the hazmat suit he had on.
Looking down, Becky couldn't tell much about the guy looking back up at them. His eyes were the only things visible behind the clear plastic faceplate, with the black mask covering his mouth and nose. The eyes didn't look welcoming, but they also seemed a bit wary of Ronda.
Ronda handled the introductions. "Eric Bischoff, this is Becky Lynch, and this is Bayley Martinez. As you know, I'm in charge of the lab now. In time, we're going to start working two shifts. One of them will be you and Hawkins, the other will be these two. It'll mean a less arduous workload for you, and it'll mean more output for us, so everyone will be happy."
"And what makes you think these two can cook Helmsley meth?" Bischoff asked, eyeing the two new recruits with something close to contempt.
Ronda responded in her typical style. "They can't, that's why you're going to teach them. And you're going to start right now. Begin by showing them how to suit up."
The instructions couldn't have been clearer. Becky gestured towards the final set of metal stairs that led down to the lab floor, allowing Bayley to go first. "After you, my little meth cook."
A/N: Thank you to everyone who left a review last time!
Roman agreed to Hunter's demand, but will that be the end of the matter?
Becky and Bayley have themselves a new job. Do you think they'll prove themselves worthy of it and earn some respect from the Helmsley family?
