A/N: Apologies to all for the delayed update - Uncharted 4 was released recently and it started to consume my free time. (Completely worth it - it's a wonderful, AMAZING piece of art - as are the other three games.) Lots of ground to cover in this chapter so, without further ado...

Stephanie walked quickly down the hallway backstage, nearing the locker room that she'd been sharing with her father and Chris earlier in the evening… steadily growing ever closer to the troublesome sounds that were coming from behind the closed door. There were a quite a few superstars that had gathered in the near vicinity, looking around at each other while trying to put the pieces together of what had just happened… and what they were witnessing now. From the crashes and curses that were coming from inside the locker room, it sounded like Chris was destroying everything he could get his hands on.

As she had promised him, when things began to look as if they were headed sideways in the contract signing and Paul had started to come after her, she'd damn near bolted for the production area where her father would normally wrap up the show for the night, away from the other superstars. So when the whole ordeal went down with Paul taunting Chris by saying he'd slept with Jessica, she was watching from a television monitor.

At first, she didn't believe a word that Paul was saying. She firmly believed that Paul just felt like he'd been backed into a corner and he simply wanted to make one last power play now that the whole thing was crumbling at his feet. She was proud of Chris for standing his ground initially and not rising to the bait.

But when Paul started in with the details about their encounter… she saw something shift in Chris's expression and she somehow knew that Paul was telling the truth, even if Chris was still trying to remain skeptical. Slowly, a flood of emotions started to seep their way into her system. Before anything else rose to the surface, she felt the shame and embarrassment for Chris. She remembered that he'd told her that Jessica had written about a night of infidelity in the journal that she'd left him, but that there was never any mention of who it was with. It had nearly wrecked Chris trying to figure out who it was – obsessing over it the way he did with things.

Knowing all of this and watching it play out on the screen was heart wrenching. Bad enough that Jessica had cheated on him in the first place. Worse for Chris because it was with his least favorite person, Paul.

On the heels of being upset for Chris, the next emotion to surface was anger. Knowing that Paul had slept with Jessica meant that he had cheated on her to do so. She remembered the time that he was in Florida quite well – they spoken on the phone a lot more at that point and ironically, she'd thought at the time that they were in the best point of their relationship. Stripping away all of the extra layers that everyday life can weight people down with and being able to just talk to one another had seemed to do wonders for them.

But apparently the reason he was so nice then was because he was getting his fix in other ways.

Learning about the way he was treating the women in the company, post-rape, she could honestly say she wasn't surprised. Learning that he had cheated on her roughly a year ago though? That felt like a sucker punch. Even though any kind of feelings she'd once felt for this man were now in shambles, she couldn't help but be pissed that he had been mistreating her long before she was made blatantly aware that he was.

Then Paul revealed his cards about the tattoo and she saw something inside Chris's already strained expression start to come apart at the seams.

Suddenly, the divorce papers she had just served him didn't seem like enough for this bastard. She found herself having a fleeting thought of wishing that Chris hadn't been injured and they hadn't already agreed to terminate the match.

No sooner had she thought it, Paul made the comment about Ash and Chris snapped. Just… completely went berserk. He lunged for Paul and she noticed that her father barely made it out of the way before the two hit the mat. Chris was laying punches into Paul left and right – swinging for the fences, much like he had the night that she'd watched him train in the basement. There was no finesse to these punches, this was just Chris hitting him as hard and as fast as he could.

It took the entire group of referees and ten police officers to separate them. Even as Paul was moving towards the back, Chris was still struggling to get free to attack him again. The look on his face was murderous and she could only imagine what he was thinking. He was completely enraged – almost to the point of looking unhinged – and the sight of it unsettled her.

After tonight, she hoped it was a sight she would never see again.

As soon as she had confirmed Paul's departure, she immediately started in the direction of the locker room, knowing that's where Chris would be headed. At the very least he would be there because he needed to get his things before flying home with her. At the worst…

There was another large crash from inside the locker room. She glared at the superstars gathering around and they parted like the Red Sea for her to come face-to-face with the door. She looked down at the handle for a moment, hesitating for just the slightest second. She didn't really know what she expected to see in here, but she knew that she was going to have to talk Chris down into a normal frame of mind before she did anything else.

"I don't know if it's such a good idea for you to go in there right now." Jay warned her. She looked up at him.

"Someone needs to, otherwise he's going to end up injuring himself." She told him, Again- she added mentally, before reaching for the doorknob and opening the door just wide enough for her to slip through before shutting it again. She turned around to survey the room.

With the exception of their personal belongings, whatever wasn't bolted to the floor had either been overturned or smashed to pieces. Chris was standing in the middle of the room, his right hand holding his left shoulder as he breathed heavily. He looked up at her when she entered and she noticed that the carefree sparkle his eyes normally housed was gone, in its place was a blazing fire of rage. His jaw was clenched tight.

He looked like…

Well…

He looked like a lunatic.

"Are you finished?" She asked him, taking the tone of a mother watching her child throwing a temper tantrum.

"If you came here to talk me out of that match, you're wasting your time." He warned her in a clipped tone, pointing a finger in her direction.

Well, this was off to a great start… She took a deep breath. While it was true that she'd had a moment where she wished that they hadn't cancelled the match, she knew that cancelling it was the better option for everyone involved and she needed to remind Chris of this.

"Chris," she said calmly, "You need to think about this. You need to calm down-"

"I need to calm down? Calm down?!" He shouted at her. "After what that son of a BITCH just did?!"

"I know. I saw." She said simply, watching as Chris started to pace back and forth in the same spot she had nearly an hour earlier. His adrenaline was leaving him with more pent up energy than he knew what to do with. "But you need to think about the bigger picture."

"The bigger picture is me ripping his balls off and shoving them down his throat." He spat at her. She decided that her calm approach wasn't working very well, but she was determined to stand her ground and talk him off of the ledge he was about to dive headfirst from.

"You're injured." She told him matter-of-factly.

"I. Don't. Care." He said definitively, taking a step towards her. She didn't move from her spot, but to see him react like this was starting to stress her out. She didn't think that he would lash out on her, but… she hadn't thought Paul would do that either and look where that had gotten them.

"Your shoulder is not going to be healed in that amount of time and you've probably already lost any progress you were making from all of this," she said, gesturing to the disaster around them.

"I don't care," he repeated. "We are NOT cancelling this match."

"You're not medically cleared." She pointed out.

"Then I'll waive medical liability!" He shouted in response. "I'll encase the damn thing in concrete if I have to!" She sighed at him irritably.

"Your emotions are getting the better of you right now." She started, but he cut her off.

"You know what? You're probably right, my emotions are clouding my judgment right now." He sarcastically patronized her. "But where the fuck are your emotions?" He demanded. "He might have been fucking my wife behind my back, but that only means that he was doing it behind yours too! We're both the fucking chumps right now! Doesn't that piss you off?" He yelled, getting into her personal space.

"YES!" She screamed at him, leaning in towards his face in response. "It infuriates me that he did this without me knowing for so long. That he got away with it for so long and that I even married him in the first place!"

"Then you should be helping me plan this match instead of trying to talk me out of it!" He defended. "Don't you want to see him get what's coming to him?"

"Yeah, I do!" She told him. "But you won't be able to do it." She told him. He scoffed at her and waved her off, shifting his weight and walking away from her. "You are not 100%. You won't have a clear head in this match and you know it. If that's not a surefire way to get injured then I don't know what is." He turned back to her.

"Why do you care if I get injured? Won't matter to your Dad because I'll have already waived medical liability at that point." He dismissed. She felt her blood boil at that comment.

"Why do I care if you get injured?" she asked him incredulously. "Are you fucking kidding me? You honestly think that the only reason that we care about you is so that you can have this stupid match with Paul? You're more like family than he ever was!" She insisted. "Don't you dare act like you're only around because you're a minion to do my father's bidding!"

This conversation had gotten out of hand quickly. Much faster than Stephanie had anticipated, anyway. Chris was so far gone in his rage that nothing seemed to be getting through to him and she was starting to lose her temper at his stubbornness.

"And on top of that, what about your family?" She asked him. "You have a son that needs his father right now. Are you willing to throw that all away? Are you just trying to get yourself killed?"

"Of course not!" He shouted, stepping towards her.

"Well you sure have a funny way of showing it." She commented, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"It's one fucking match in the middle of a crowded arena, how the hell does that equal a death wish?"

"Because you know damn well that this is not a sanctioned match!" She screamed at him. "This is an all-out WAR between the two of you and you're going to do everything you can to beat the shit of each other and ruin each other's lives."

"You knew that the moment I told you about it." He pointed out. She nodded exaggeratedly.

"Yeah! I did! Which is why I had such a hard time with it!" She said sarcastically.

"Contrary to what you might think, I can handle this." He told her, gritting his teeth and stepping into Stephanie's personal space once again.

"You. Are. Injured." She said to him, pausing between each word and enunciating each one perfectly to him, mocking his response to her earlier. "Your emotions are a mess. You have no business being out there."

"I don't care!" Chris bellowed, inches from her face at this point. "I said I can fucking handle this, and I will!" He pointed a finger forcefully at her and the reaction was involuntary.

She flinched.

God help her, she flinched.

In that moment, even though it was Chris, all she could see was Paul. It was as if she had been transported back to her bedroom nearly four months ago when she and Paul had argued over the time that she was spending with Chris before Paul had struck her across the face. The fear was gone almost as soon as it had appeared, but the damage had already been done. Stephanie was shaken by the encounter and she could tell that Chris had caught the expression as well. She immediately turned and opened the door to leave, ignoring his defeated sigh of her name.

That went well. Chris mused sarcastically to himself as Stephanie stormed away. He didn't chase after her – he knew that would only make things worse. His blood was still boiling and he wasn't exactly in the mood for a heart-to-heart at the moment. He turned back to look at the locker room and surveyed the damage. Never in his life had he felt this kind of boiling hatred before. He didn't even know what had possessed him to start coming in here and smashing everything to pieces, but that had been the first thing he'd done as soon as the referees had let him go.

"Tell me Chris, do you even know what her face would have looked like in the throes of passion? The noises she made?"

He kept seeing the scene play over and over in his head on a constant loop. Paul's face was constantly in front of him, taunting him about having an affair with his dead wife. All he could see was the two of them kissing, making love in his house… in his bed… He felt nauseous.

He packed his things and walked out to the rental car. Vince had taken a separate car that was parked next to his. He fired off a text to Vince to tell him that Stephanie would need to ride back to the airport with him – he was going to drive alone. He loaded his suitcase in the trunk and quickly started the car before taking off. He figured it would still take him about an hour to make it to the airport at this hour, so he would have plenty of time to think.

He'd just pulled onto the interstate when Paul's comment about her tattoo came to the front of his mind again. He gripped the steering wheel a little tighter as his nostrils started to flare. He could feel the sting behind his eyes… this overwhelming urge to break down was the first emotion he'd felt other than blinding rage, not counting the brief moment of guilt from when he'd startled Stephanie.

He pulled off to the shoulder and put the car in park as his vision started to blur. His hands clenching the steering wheel so tightly, his knuckles started to turn white. When the first tear escaped down the side of his face, he started to scream into the silence of the car. No words, just leaning forwards and screaming at the top of his lungs into the dash. He gripped the wheel and shook it, or rather himself since the wheel itself was securely attached to the rest of the car, just screaming as loud as he could.

He screamed until he ran out of breath, resting his forehead on the steering wheel and listening to the sound of his own breathing and the passing traffic. He only felt mildly better, but at least the all-encompassing rage he'd been feeling for the past few hours had started to subside a little. He closed his eyes for a moment as the realization came to him of just how much he hated Jessica in that moment.

He hated her for cheating on him with Paul. He hated her for needing to have a paternity test done. He hated her for not telling him that her cancer had returned. He hated her for writing all of her deep dark secrets down for him to find. He hated her for dying before he could shout all of these things at her.

But most of all? He hated himself for not realizing a single thing was amiss.

She got off easy, in his opinion. She'd done all these things to him and left him to clean up the mess… It wasn't even close to being fair. He had all of this rage and no one to direct it at but himself and the people around him that were only trying to be helpful.

He lifted his head from the steering wheel and leaned back in the driver's seat again. He wiped at his eyes and took a deep breath, compartmentalizing his emotions as best he could before shifting the car into drive once more.

By the time he made it to the airport, his shoulder was tightening up and there was a dull ache to it… The adrenaline seemed to finally be wearing off. He knew that he'd been stupid to go after Paul and then take his frustrations out on all of the inanimate objects of the locker room. Stephanie was probably right in that regard – whatever small progress he had made in the past week was probably negated by this little charade of his. But whatever damage there was, it was already done at this point. He was just going to have to deal with the fallout as best as he could.

Chris and Stephanie didn't speak on the flight back to Connecticut and the subsequent car ride back to the house was just as silent. Not long after they made it home Ash had started to wake himself up and cry. Linda offered to feed him to let Chris rest, but he insisted on taking him. Stephanie went immediately to her room barely even looking at Chris.

He didn't let it worry him. He knew neither one of them were in the mood to mend any fences and the tensions were still way too high to even consider talking about the plan and what would happen now. So Chris let her go as he warmed a bottle for Ash before heading back towards the guest room. He took up position in the rocking chair, his shoulder throbbing, staring down at Ash as he fed him a bottle. Chris watched as Ash's little eyes just took in everything in the near vicinity, fixating on his father's face, before the blinking started to get slower. The eyelids seemed to grow heavier and heavier until they were finally closed.

Normally, at this point, Chris would have immediately stood up and walked the infant over to his crib and laid him down because even after months of practice, he was still hesitant about holding him for an extended period of time. Afraid he was going to ruin him somehow. Tonight, he remained in his chair for a while longer to stare down at the tiny human in his arms.

"I never heard back about the paternity test she asked me to take, so I guess he could actually… be my kid instead of yours."

He knew that Paul was lying. The paternity test results had been mailed to their house, so he knew that whoever had submitted for the test was not as Ash's father. For obvious reasons, Jessica had never asked him to submit to a paternity test.

But what if Paul wasn't the only one she slept with?

He'd been struggling with that idea on the way home. Jessica had only written about one instance. But what if there were others? There was no way for him to know the truth. The rage that had settled low in his belly started to rumble as he thought about it.

He made up his mind that as soon as the doctors' offices opened, he was going to have a paternity test done on himself. He knew it was foolish – more than likely a waste of money, but he needed to be reassured. Nothing would hurt him more than learning that his son… wasn't really his. He knew that's what Paul had wanted – to plant the seed of doubt – and really, kudos to him for a job well done. The seed had been planted, taken root, and fully blossomed by the time he'd made it home.

But, he just needed to be sure.

That was the same phrase he'd used to the nurse as he explained what he wanted. Ash was happily bouncing on Chris's knee as they waited for her to bring the swabs to collect the DNA with. He was almost positive that he looked homeless at this point because his hair was unkempt, he hadn't shaved for a few days, and he damn sure hadn't slept a wink last night so the bags under his eyes were much closer to the size of suitcases by now. The nurse returned with a few items in hand and Ash babbled at her.

"He's a little cutie pie." She commented. Chris smiled. "All right, so this is a painless process – I just need to get a cheek swab from both of you." Chris nodded.

"How long does it normally take to get the results?" He asked.

"It's usually within a couple of days." She told him. "You should definitely know by the end of the week." He nodded again and she motioned for him to open his mouth for her to take the cheek swab on him. She placed it in a plastic container with a label on it before reaching for the second swab. She made a few faces at Ash and he smiled at her in response. She gently inserted the swab into his mouth and quickly brought it back out.

"That should do it." She commented, sealing the swab up in the second container that she'd brought with her. "We'll give you a call once the results are in." She told him.

Stephanie was rinsing a dish out in the sink when he returned. She looked up as he entered before putting the dish in the drying rack and turning the water off. She grabbed the dish towel to dry her hands as he carried Ash into the kitchen and sat at one of the barstools surrounding the island.

"We… we should probably talk." He started. She heaved a sigh as she set the dish towel down again before turning around to face him, leaning back against the countertop as she motioned for him to talk.

"I'm sorry I frightened you last night." He said. "I didn't-"

"I know you didn't do it on purpose." She told him. "I just… got swept up in the moment and went back to that night." Chris nodded and remained silent, holding Ash as he banged his hands on the island countertop.

"I was a complete jackass with the way I behaved." He admitted. "I should have apologized sooner, but I…"

"Needed to blow off some steam first?" She supplied for him. He gave her a small smile.

"Something like that, yeah." He agreed.

"I think we were both acting like jackasses for a few moments there." She said. "But… tensions were pretty high." He nodded in agreement as a brief silence filled the kitchen.

"I can't back out of this match, Steph." He said quietly. "I know you feel that I should… but I can't." Stephanie took a deep breath and folded her arms across her chest.

"Why?" She asked simply. Chris shrugged as he sighed. "Because if this is just a matter of your pride, that's unacceptable."

"I just… I can't let him get away with all of this." He said. "I don't know how else to explain it other than it just feels wrong not to face him." He looked down at Ash. "If I let him walk away now, after everything he's done… how do I explain that to Ash when he's old enough? What kind of a man… what kind of a father would I be if I don't even try to stand up for those I love? How would he react if he knew that his father had the chance to stand up for his best friend who'd been wronged, and a chance to deal with the ... and his father did nothing?"

"You don't need to have this match with Paul to teach him these things, Chris." Stephanie told him, walking up to the island and leaning forwards on it. "There's a difference between teaching a lesson and simply being reckless. Your health needs to be taken into consideration with this too, you know. Otherwise you might not be around long enough to teach him much of anything." She said.

"I hear what you're saying." Chris agreed with her. "And I know you only have my best interests at heart, but… I don't know, I guess I just figured that once this match was over… I'd be done anyway." Stephanie looked puzzled.

"What do you mean you'd be done anyway?" She asked him. He heaved a sigh and shifted Ash around a little bit before answering her.

"I was thinking… that this would be my last match, no matter what the outcome was." He told her. "It's just too much to try and do this job and this," he motioned to Ash, "at the same time. I was an idiot to even attempt it when he was a newborn, I don't know what the hell I was thinking there."

"You were thinking… of retiring?" Chris looked up at her.

"I'm already on borrowed time." He said. "By the time that he'd get ready to start school, I'd have to settle down and stop being such a nomad - someone has to be the adult here. I don't want to homeschool him. I want him to have friends and be able to go to school like a normal kid. Turns out, you kinda need to have a parent or guardian in the same general area full time for that to work." Stephanie was flabbergasted. "But, that's a ways away yet." He admitted. "Just something I've been considering. I was, at the very least, planning on trying to negotiate some kind of deal with your dad about a reduced schedule of some sort."

"Back to this, though," he said, bringing them back around to the matter at hand. "I'm going to do this… with or without your support." He said to her. "I'd really like for it to be with your support, but I'll understand if you don't." Stephanie sighed again.

"What has the doctor said?" She asked him. Chris shook his head.

"I won't know until this afternoon." He told her. "But… I think that… in the end, it's going to be my decision. He can advise me to do whatever he wants, but it's my decision whether or not to listen to him." She nodded at him. "So what do you think?"

"That you're irresponsible and making a mistake." She said quickly, shaking her head at him. "But, we're a team right? So I'm here for you. Like always." Chris gave her a wane smile.

"Thanks." She shook her head at him again.

"Don't thank me yet. We've got a lot of ground to cover before this week is over."

Against the doctor's wishes, Chris started to lightly continue his training. He'd signed a medical liability waiver with Vince, although Vince insisted that he didn't need to. The plan was scheduled to take place as it had originally. Stephanie had convinced Chris to tape his shoulder before the match. He argued that it would only put a bigger bullseye on it, but she insisted that at least it would be better protected taped up than nothing on it at all.

The weeks that had led them up to this point had seemed to crawl by, but this last week before the actual match was turning out to be the fastest week of their lives. Before Chris realized, it was the Friday before the pay-per-view. At this point, there wasn't much left to do. He was still taking it easy with his training – for fear of injuring himself even further before the match was supposed to happen. All that was left to do was wait.

He and Stephanie had been… uneasy around each other ever since Monday. While they'd had their discussion on Tuesday, Chris felt as if the dynamic between them was… different somehow. They were still at odds with each other about how he was handling this, but they had basically just agreed to disagree at this point. It was a truce that he hated. He hated being on opposite sides of the fence as her – he knew they were much more formidable as a team together than they were apart. But, she was just trying to keep him safe. And he was just trying to make the man who'd ruined both of their lives suffer.

Unfortunately it seemed that those two goals just didn't coincide with each other.

Stephanie was sitting on the floor, playing with Ash as Chris stared absently at them. She knew that he wanted to seem as if he was paying attention, but she could tell from the look on his face that he was a million miles away in his head.

His phone started to buzz on the table next to him, which snapped him out of his reverie. He looked at the caller ID for a moment before standing up to answer it. She watched him closely as he walked from the family room into the kitchen to pace as he listened to whatever the caller was telling him. She watched as he hung up no more than a minute later and rested his hands on the countertop, hanging his head. Concerned, she picked up Ash and walked into the kitchen.

"Is everything okay?" She asked him. He turned to her and she could tell that he was crying.

"Yeah," he sniffled. "Yeah, everything's fine." She raised her eyebrow at him.

"Sure it is." She said, disbelievingly. "Who was on the phone?" He looked back down to his hand, as if he'd forgotten he was still holding it.

"The hospital." He told her. "I, uh… I had a paternity test done." Stephanie's heart sank.

"Chris…" she whispered, feeling tears begin to sting her own eyes.

"It's all right." He reassured her. "Ash is mine. He's my son." His voice cracked on "son" and he started to cry, Stephanie pulling him into an embrace while holding Ash. He sobbed into the crook of her neck and she felt something shift inside of her.

"Whatever you need to do…" she whispered to him. "Finish this." He pulled back to look at her, questioningly. "I don't want him to ever hurt either of us like this again." She clarified. "Finish it. For all of us."

"I will." He promised.

Royal Rumble
Sunday, January 25th 2004
9:08pm

Chris was sitting on the bench in the locker room as the trainer taped his shoulder. Chris felt like he was going to have to be cut out of this thing once this match was over, with all of the tape that he was using. He just hoped that there was enough left for him to tape his wrists up with after the trainer was finished with his shoulder. He slowly popped his knuckles as his mind started to drift.

Chris leaned down to kiss the sleeping infant in his crib. He'd spent the entire day with Ash, trying to console him, but he'd been fussy right from the start. It was like somehow knew that his father was about to do something incredibly stupid. This had never seemed like so much of a mistake as it did in this moment, as he was kissing his son goodbye to head to the arena for this match.

"I love you, buddy." He whispered to him. "Daddy loves you and he'll be back before you even realize he's gone." He promised, stroking his back a little before taking a deep breath. If he didn't walk away now, he never would…

He softly closed the door behind him and turned to see Stephanie standing at the end of the hallway, trying not to cry. He walked to her and set his bag down on the ground next to them.

"Be careful out there tonight." She told him. He nodded.

"I will."

"Please don't do anything stupid." She pleaded with him.

"What, you mean like besides agree to fight your husband in a brawl in front of thirty thousand people? That sort of stupid?" He asked, forcing a smile.

"Yeah, that sort of stupid." She agreed.

"I'll be fine. We'll laugh about this later." He told her.

"I hope you're right." She agreed.

"Just…do me a favor?" He asked her. She looked up at him. "Don't watch this one."

"Chris-"

"Promise me." He said sternly. "No matter what happens tonight, I don't want you to watch. This is going to be hard enough for you just being in this situation. I don't want you to have to watch too." She heaved a sigh and nodded. Chris pulled her into a hug.

"We're going to get our lives back after tonight." He whispered to her. "Both of us."

"All done here, Chris." The trainer said, patting him lightly on the shoulder, rousing him from his reverie. Chris thanked him and took the remainder of the tape to begin taping his wrists up. He'd no sooner started on taping his left hand when there was a knock on the door.

"Come in." He said, not looking up as the person entered the room. After a few moments passed of silence, he finally glanced up to see who had entered.

And nearly shit a brick.

"What the hell are you doing here?" He asked, shooting to his feet in milliseconds. Stephanie was standing in front of the door, looking very much like the McMahon she always had in front of the cameras.

"If you think I was going to just let you do this alone, you're crazy." She told him.

"If he sees you back here-"

"What's he going to do?" She asked him, cutting him off. "Seriously, what is he going to do? There's nothing he can do to me back here." Chris raked a hand through his hair as he started to pace.

"Look, you told me that you were doing this with or without me." She told him. "And I'm here, I'm with you on this one."

"But I wanted you to be out of harm's way."

"And I am." She reassured him. "I just wanted to be here to be the first to congratulate you when you walk back through that curtain when this is all over." He scoffed at her.

"Whatever happened to the 'you can't do this' speech?" He quipped.

"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em right?" Chris took a deep breath. He didn't like that she was here at the arena, but there wasn't a lot that he could do about it. She was, as he'd said himself, a grown woman and she could do as she pleased. It wasn't like he wasn't making his own stupid decisions lately. He shook his head at her.

"Don't you dare come out from back here." He warned her. "Do not get involved in this match, no matter what." He said, pointing at her. "You hear me? No matter what." She nodded.

"I'll stay with Dad and Shane." She promised.

10:12pm

Chris and Stephanie walked side-by-side to the guerilla area, most of the other superstars and crew backstage turning their heads to watch as they passed. In a rare circumstance, even though Paul was the champion, he was going to be the first competitor out for the match, which meant that he was already getting set up to walk out. He was on the stage by the time that they made it to guerilla, the crowd nearly booing him out of the arena.

Chris turned to Stephanie as they started to get things prepped for his entrance. He grabbed her hands and held them for a moment.

"Don't." She told him. "Whatever you're about to say, don't." He gave her a small smile and a curt nod. "Just be careful." She warned.

"Always." He said, before leaning down and placing a kiss on her forehead. She motioned for him to go and he walked up the steps to the ramp without looking back, steeling himself for the battle that was about to begin.

The fireworks shot off and his music hit. When he turned and the lights went up, he locked eyes with Paul, igniting the hatred that he'd kept under wraps for the last week, and every other emotion that he'd felt in the past four months since learning about Jessica's secrets. The emotion he'd need to tap into if he was going to stand a chance against Paul.

10:16pm

Time to play The Game.