NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: UGGH! I can't describe last Monday's RAW without using the word cluster in it somewhere! Even Y2J couldn't save it. BTW, I'm convinced that Jericho's return is merely a setup for Jericho/Taker at WM28, and that the "End Begins" or whatever thing is Taker's streak being broken (I honestly don't think Jericho came back to challenge CM Punk). I guess it's the WWE's contingency plan if Rock/Cena is a bust. With all due respect, Taker needs to retire yesterday. He can't do this anymore. Quite honestly, I'm NOT looking forward to Wrestlemania this year.

Okay, I know I'm ranting, but I'm almost embarrassed to be a wrestling fan these days. I'm glad I have years of footage to watch from back in the day when the WWE/WWF was actually watchable.

Match descriptions are courtesy of Wikipedia, and it's still the night of Stephanie's first kidnapping, but we'll check in on Stephanie and the girls briefly. The interview is courtesy of Sunday Night Heat.

Chapter Twenty-six

Stephanie turned her head towards the passenger side window as the limo rolled down the highway towards home. Her eyes were shut and it looked as if she was asleep. In reality, she was wide awake. She figured that if she kept her eyes closed, it would look like she was asleep, and her dad would leave her alone. Even so, he kept reassuring her every so often that the two of them were on their way home, and that she was safe, and that he would do everything he could to protect her.

God, if I say anything right now, she thought, I might wind up saying a few things that I know I'll regret. What a selfish, self-centered, self-serving excuse for a human being you are, Dad! You and Shane both. And the worst part is, you've gone all Papa Wolf on me and I have to pretend to be grateful.

Thank God Mark and I got the marriage licenses taken care of. If it's all gonna go the way I think it is now, I won't be able to so much as blow my nose without Dad looking over my shoulder.

I'd love to let you know just what I really think of you, Dad.

Giving her father a piece of her mind, however, was out of the question. Even if she could let Vince have both barrels, Stephanie could not afford to let her real feelings rise to the surface. At this stage in the game, her ability to keep her mouth shut and play the role of the innocent, frightened daughter was paramount. Any slip-ups, however slight, and her future with Mark would go right down the drain.

Surreptitiously, Stephanie reached into her purse. Since she was partially covered by her jacket, nobody could see her hands. Her fingers touched the edge of Mark's picture, and she let out a small sigh. Rather than put the photograph in her carry-on bag, she'd opted to put it in the inside zipper pocket of her purse so that she could keep a better eye on it. In this way, she could feel closer to her fiancée, even if was only a photograph.

Her mind drifted back to the tumultuous events of the past three days:

~~~MOD~~~

Although Vince's scheme concerning Austin blew up in his face at Wrestlemania, the addition of Hunter Hearst Helmsley and D-Generation X to the Corporation via his grudge match against Kane made up for it somewhat.

Triple H tried to ambush Kane by coming through the crowd while all eyes were on the stage entrance, hitting Kane out of the ring and then hitting him into the ring post and whipping him into the steel steps. Kane then picked Triple H up and straddled him on the crowd barrier, pushing him into Shane's Mean Street Posse who was at ring side, picking him up again to ram his back into the steel post three times. Back inside the ring Kane dominated Helmsley with his rough fighting style, using his foot to choke Triple H and knocking him down with clotheslines and punches until Triple H gained momentum from a reversal, smashing Kane's face into his knee. Kane was allowed time to recover when Triple H was distracted by Chyna coming to ringside. Triple H tried to Pedigree Kane as he stood up but failed while Chyna pushed the steel steps into the ring. Kane picked them up and ran into Triple H, who used the turnbuckle to swing his feet up and kicked them back into Kane, causing Kane to stagger backwards and drop them before smashing his face into the steps from a drop toe-hold. Triple H then clotheslined Kane out of the ring, following himself and attempting to Pedigree Kane on the steps but was back body dropped When they made it back into the ring Kane chokeslammed Triple H while Chyna entered the ring with a steel chair, telling Kane she wanted to attack Triple H but as Kane turned, Chyna hit him with the chair causing him to corner her but again was hit with the chair, this time by Triple H who followed it up with a Pedigree onto the chair. Chyna and Triple H celebrated the reunion of D-Generation X afterwards.

Before X-Pac could make his way to the ring for his European Championship match, Patterson and Brisco attacked him from behind but caused little problem to X-Pac who beat them then ran into the ring, with Shane McMahon fleeing. Shane eventually made his way to the ring and was punched into the corner, escaping a Bronco Buster move when Test pulled him out of the ring. Shane tried to escape once again but X-Pac chased him and threw him back into the ring, only to be struck down by Test and then have his crotch rammed into the ring post. When he returned to the ring Shane scoop slammed him and attempted a Corporate Elbow, with X-Pac sitting up just before the end but he was brought back down with a low blow as referee Mike Chioda was distracted by Test. Shane continued to push the disqualification boundaries by whipping X-Pac with his belt several times before being back body dropped out of the ring, recovering only to be met with a flying crossbody. The Mean Street Posse tried to restrain X-Pac but he fought back, only to be floored by Test. After a superplex, the pin-count was broken up by Test but he was soon kicked out of the ring then X-Pac whipped McMahon with the belt before round house kicking him into the corner and performing the Bronco Buster. When Chioda checked on McMahon afterwards, Test struck X-Pac with the championship belt but by the time McMahon covered him he managed to kick out. Test tried to interfere but took a Bronco Buster too. Triple H and Chyna came to the ring to pull Test out but when McMahon was floored by an X Factor, Chyna distracted the referee to allow Triple H to Pedigree X-Pac and cover him with Shane, allowing him to retain the title. The New Age Outlaws ran in the ring and brawled with Triple H and Test until the lights went out and Kane's music began to play but by the time the lights came up The Corporation were clear of the ring and had fled.

Vince's Corporation had lost a big player, but it had gained another. Even the loss of the WWF Championship wasn't all that significant in Vince's eyes. After all, when the smoke finally cleared, he would be the one standing over his nemesis.

Or so he thought.

~~~MOD~~~

"Stephanie? Sweetheart, wake up. We're home."

Stephanie sighed and stirred, and then opened her eyes. "That was quick," she yawned, as she gathered her things and climbed out of the limo. "What time is it?"

"It's not even eleven o'clock yet," Vince answered. He instructed his chauffeur and personal assistant to bring in the suitcases . He unlocked the front door and swung it open, ushering his assistants inside. Stephanie followed, carrying her purse and jacket, and Vince finally stepped in, closing the door behind him.

Stephanie trudged up the stairs, ready to unpack and turn in for the night. In many ways it was good to be home, to be in her own room again. It was nice to be able to smell her bed linens, wrap up in her blankets and brush her hair in front of her mirror. Her bedroom was filled with good memories, memories that reminded her of good times with her mom and dad and brother, and she needed the distraction more than ever now.

Stephanie sighed as she ambled down the hall to her room. Now that she had stopped moving, and was home again, the events of the past twenty-four hours washed over her. All the emotions, the tensions, the horror and the hardship came rushing back at her, draining her of whatever energy remained.

But, as soon as she opened her bedroom door and flipped on the light, her adrenaline kicked back in and she screamed.

Stephanie's bedroom had been ransacked. The pictures she had so carefully selected had been torn down from the walls, and smashed on the floor. Her trinkets and collectibles had been knocked to the floor as well; some of them had even been broken. Her bedside lamp lay on its side, the shade slashed and the wire frame bent. Her dresser drawers had been pulled out, and the contents were thrown across the now unmade bed. There were globs of body lotion in her shoes, lipstick was smeared on blouses, and water had been poured into one of her jewelry boxes. It looked like a bomb had gone off inside her room.

Her heart racing, Stephanie stepped carefully and quickly over the fallen items in her room and rushed into her bathroom to see there was any damage done there. Sure enough, there was, and this damage was disturbing. Her underwear—her bras and panties—had been emptied from her dresser drawers and strewn across her bathroom floor. Some of her perfumes and colognes had been mixed together, leaving them unusable. And even more frightening was what had been written on her bathroom mirror in red lipstick.

It was Mark's Undertaker symbol. Underneath it were the words Mine. She will belong to me, Vince!

But it wasn't Mark's handwriting. Stephanie could easily recognize her brother's penmanship.

Hot as lava fury boiled up inside of her. Part of her wanted to kill Vince and Shane for having the nerve—the unmitigated gall!—to invade the only sanctuary she had and defiling it like this. The two of them were both sociopaths, as far as she was concerned. And it made her decision to bring them down a lot more personal.

"Stephanie! What's wrong? What happened—Oh, Dear God!"

Stephanie yelped and spun around. It was her father. "Dad! My room!" she managed. She was wide-eyed, red-faced and hyperventilating. She was beyond furious, but to Vince, it looked like she was terrified.

Vince laid his hand gently on Stephanie's shoulder. "Why don't you go downstairs?" he suggested softly.

"I—I can't!" Stephanie gasped. It was all she could do to keep from throwing her father's hand off of her shoulder. "I wanna clean this up—"

"I'm gonna call the police. I don't want you touching a thing. This has gone too far."

Just then, Linda, dressed in her nightgown and bathrobe, with a lace sleep mask in her hand, rushed in. "Stephanie, Vince? What's going—OH!"

Vince held his hand up. His tone of voice was soft, but it meant business. "It's okay. I'll take care of this. Linda, Honey. Take Stephanie downstairs while I call the police."

"When did this happen?" Linda asked, pale and horrified, as she gathered her daughter into her arms.

"I don't know. This must have happened while we were away. Did you hear or see anything out of the ordinary?"

"No. I got home early this morning. I haven't been in Stephanie's room since I got back."

Tears began to fall from Stephanie's eyes as Linda gently led her away. "My room, Mom!" she sobbed. "How could he do this to my room?"

Vince cursed under his breath and reached for Stephanie's phone. Before he was able to pick it up, the cell phone in his pocket rang. Slowly, the WWF's principal owner picked it up and glanced at the screen. He then answered. His voice was more wobbly than he would have liked. "Hello?"

"Vince." The raspy voice was straight out of Vince's nightmares.

"Mark! You bastard!"

"That's no way to speak to the future owner of this company." A pause. "Did you have a chance to see my work? Or the gifts I left in your daughter's bathroom?"

"How dare you ransack my daughter's bedroom!" Vince shouted, his fury almost palpable. "I'll call the police and haul your ass in for breaking and entering and vandalism! You are completely out of line-"

Taker cut him off. "Vince, I had to make sure that you took my threats seriously. Now, don't hang up. I have something for you as well. Your study. It's on your desk." A pause. "Stay on the line with me."

Vince stomped down the stairs and into his study, where he flipped on the lights and cast a sweeping glance across the room. "Okay. I'm here. Now what?"

"What do you see, Vince?"

Nothing looked out of the ordinary, except for..."There's an envelope on my desk that wasn't there when I left the house on Friday."

"Open it."

Vince's fingers shook as he opened the envelope and pulled out its contents. It was a picture of Stephanie's bedroom, before the vandalism...and Stephanie was asleep in her bed. The principal owner of the WWF let the picture fall to the floor and stepped back, his face gone pale.

Taker's voice sounded confident. "Vince, it's only a matter of time before your little girl accepts me as her personal savior, and becomes one with my Ministry. So wrap your arms around her, hold her tight, and give her my regards."

A pause. "Oh, and one more thing, Vince. DON'T even think about TRYING to call the police. You know what happened the last time you did. I don't think you'd want that to happen again now, do you?"

Vince shook his head. "No," he answered quietly.

"Good. I guess we'll be seeing each other soon." The call ended, and Vince threw his cell phone across his study. It smacked the wall and bounced to the floor.

"Vince?" Linda called out from the living room. "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah." Vince picked up his cell phone and tapped in a phone number. "Why don't you two get some clothing together. I'm gonna get you both a cab and have them take you to a hotel to spend the night..."

~~~MOD~~~

"...that's when Mark called me and asked what my schedule looked like the next couple of weeks," Ryan chimed in, as she pulled a brush through Stephanie's hair. She'd added some Frizz-Ease to smooth it out and to keep it straight and shiny. "I was going to New York to be on Howard Stern the week after your 'abduction' to promote Saving Ryan's Privates. It's kinda funny. My neighbors at my apartment complex know my apartment better than I do now!" The two girls shared a laugh. "Mark and I arranged things so that it looked like I'd been kidnapped by the Ministry."

"I'm sorry that you and your brother got dragged into my dad's revenge plot."

"You don't need to apologize for anything. Mark took good care of me." Ryan put a hand over Stephanie's face and misted her hair with some hair spray. "I spent the day I was supposedly 'kidnapped' at the hotel Mark and the Ministry guys were staying in." She smirked. "I bought some lingerie at the gift shop, had a nice lunch, swam a few laps, made reservations for the four of us here, and got sacrificed by the Lord Of Darkness, all within 24 hours."

Stephanie busted up laughing. The way Ryan had described her day was too funny. "Wanna know how my day went?" she asked before her cell phone rang. "Hello? Anna, hey. Where are you, I thought you'd be back by now? Oh, okay. Wouldn't make much sense to drop her off, come back and then go back. Yeah. Oh, you should see what this dress looks like on me. Well, okay. You guys hurry back when you're done, okay? I don't want you or Nicole to miss seeing the end result. Drive safely. Okay, bye."

Stephanie ended the call. "Anna's waiting for Nicole, and they're gonna drive right back here. She didn't want to make an extra trip and I don't really blame her."

Ryan nodded. "Anyway, your day. How did that go?"

"It was actually my week. I spent the next morning cleaning everything up in my room. I repaired as much of the damage as I could. Dad offered to help, but I said no. I didn't want him in my room any more than necessary. The idea that he and my brother were willing to destroy my personal property like that made me sick.

"And then, Dad got a wild hare up his backside and decided to invite Jerry Lawler over to the house to conduct an interview on live TV, from the comfort of our living room. He was trying to make himself look like Papa Wolf protecting his helpless daughter. Of course, I saw right through it, but Jerry and the viewers on TV didn't..."

~~~MOD~~~

McMahon House

4/4/1999

Jerry Lawler cleared his throat. "First, Vince, we've known each other and been friends with each other for a long time, and I gotta admit. This is...an uncomfortable situation to say the least. But we wanna talk about Stephanie," he said, directing his gaze towards Vince's daughter. "Especially what happened to you last Monday night.

Stephanie picked her words carefully before she spoke. "Well, Jerry, truthfully...I don't really know. I don't really remember all that much about it."

Vince interrupted her. "But, it wasn't—it didn't just start last Monday. I mean, this started some time ago. And Stephanie has endured this kind of pain for some time. It started with that envelope. And in the envelope were candid shots of Stephanie. Stephanie in the shopping center. Stephanie getting out of her car at home, Stephanie in her bedroom. There were shots—uncomfortable shots—of Stephanie, invading her privacy, and that's what was in that envelope.

"Beyond that, the next thing is the teddy bear. It was given to her as a present. It meant so much to her as a very, very young child. And the burning of that teddy bear-

Jerry nodded. "Well, for someone else to even have it. You know that they had invaded your home."

Stephanie chimed in. "They've obviously been in our home. I mean, just the other night, when I came back home, I found strange things written on my mirror, my personal things were-"

"You don't have to go there," Vince gently admonished.

Stephanie looked as innocent as she could. "It's okay. I mean, they were...just..." She paused, and shook her head. Describing the wreckage in her bedroom would lead her to say something she couldn't afford to. "I don't wanna go into it."

Vince nodded in agreement. "Oh you don't need to go there."

Stephanie sighed. "He's..it's just very uncomfortable knowing that someone has been watching you."

Jerry looked bewildered and continued. "Vince, this is...we're talking about The Undertaker. You've know this guy for...what, ten years?"

"Yeah. About a decade. I thought I knew him, but he's changed. He's believing in this creature that was created. He's become this creature. He's like...and not only has become this cretin..."

Stephanie schooled her expression to conceal her anger at her father's description of her husband-to-be.

Vince continued. "...He has other people believing in what he now believes in. He has people following him. He has ...I don't know what he wants. If it's just about business, well, I've known him. I've known Mark for a long time."

"I don't know if I should say this," Jerry ventured, cautiously. "But there's a term that's called living your gimmick. I mean, you created The Undertaker. But this has gone further than that."

Vince answered, "But the difference is he's believing now in this transformation."

Jerry nodded. "Right!"

"And he's believing in who he thinks he should be. And I don't know where this is going, because he has other people believing in that. And this is personal now. This is not about business. If it's about business, I'm a businessman. I sit down with other businessmen, and we discuss things. This is something very strange, and this is something very weird." Vince fixed his gaze on his daughter. "And it involves Stephanie."

And it involves Steve Austin too, Stephanie added silently. You just haven't revealed that tidbit yet. Stephanie decided to interject. Keeping her voice as soft and sweet as she could, she said, "I'd just like to add that...I've known Mark, too." Vince nodded. "And it's like Dad said, I guess I just never really did know him. To shake hands with someone and have friendly conversations, and then...all of a sudden, sending you pictures and-"

Vince held out his hand to stop his daughter. "You don't need to go there, okay?"

Jerry continued. "I know it's uncomfortable, but can you be more specific about what exactly what happened and what exactly took place when you were abducted?"

Stephanie was tempted to say, You wanna know what really happened, Jerry? Well, I was in the office and the lights went out. Bradshaw knocked me out and took me to the Ministry's locker room. I had a Diet Pepsi, went downstairs, got to make a couple of phone calls, and signed a marriage license.

The reality is, Dad's using me to screw Steve Austin over, and he's making a fool out of you and the rest of his roster!

Instead, she said, "Well, I was sitting in the office, and-"

Vince interrupted his daughter again. "Oh, no, Steffy. Don't. It's okay." He glanced up at Jerry. "It's just important that she's safe."

"It's really okay, Dad," Stephanie tried to reassure him.

Vince shook his head. "That's what's important."

Stephanie tried one more time. "It's really okay."

Vince's voice was soft but firm. "No. Don't."

Stephanie nodded. "You know, I don't feel safe at home anymore. I don't feel safe anywhere. The only place I really feel safe is when I'm with..." She gazed up at her dad in fake adoration. "When I'm with my dad."

Vince narrowed his eyes. "And again, this is something that is personal. And if it doesn't stop, somebody is gonna get hurt." He paused for dramatic effect. "And I'll just be dammed if it's gonna be my daughter."

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I felt like I was running on empty near the end of this chapter. This story is well on its way to becoming the biggest one I've ever written, and I still have Ryan's "sacrifice," Shane's "power grab," the Ministry's beatdown on Kenny, and Backlash to write! Whew!

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