Hunter Helmsley had always liked a challenge. Tonight, not for the first time, his challenge was Ronda Rousey. It had been almost a year since the last time she had made an appearance for WWE - the last one being her sendoff on the Smackdown episode following Summerslam after her longstanding neck problems had forced her into retirement from wrestling.

The plan all along had been for Ronda to take an on-screen role as Smackdown's General Manager following her retirement, but for one reason or another, that idea was yet to come to fruition. Tonight, Hunter was going to change that.

"The place looks nice, doesn't it?" Hunter's wife Stephanie asked. She was standing beside him, her arm linked with his as they appraised The Venice Steakhouse, the restaurant owned by Ronda and her husband Seth Rollins, for the first time. They were both dressed smartly - Hunter in a dark blue suit and white shirt, Stephanie in a turquoise sleeveless dress. Their appearance was appropriate for the venue, they could see through the windows. There was barely a table empty, and everyone who was eating was dressed smart-casual at worst.

Very little appeared to have been spared in expenses by Seth and Ronda in how they had decorated and furnished the Steakhouse in the most modern styles. When Seth had made the invitation to dinner to Hunter, he had described the restaurant as a place that served fine food to people who could afford it. It was not a five star place exclusive to the rich and famous, but it certainly wasn't a Wendy's either.

"They've done well," Hunter said. "Assuming the food matches the appearance. I'm sure it does, though. Come on, let's go in. Seth and Ronda are here somewhere; I saw his Mercedes in the parking lot."

Hunter lead his wife into the restaurant. With perfect timing, they were approached by a dark haired, smartly dressed man in a black suit who looked to be in his early forties. "Good evening, and welcome to The Venice Steakhouse. Mr and Mrs Helmsley?"

"That's us," Hunter confirmed pleasantly. "We're dining with Seth and Ronda." He was sure that addition had not been necessary.

"Yes, sir. They arrived a few minutes ago. If you'll follow me, please?"

Always keen remember his manners, Hunter waited a second so that Stephanie could walk ahead of him as they were lead across the restaurant. He quickly saw where Seth and Ronda were sitting, in a booth as far from the doors to the kitchen and bathrooms as possible, away from the majority of the footfall, he realised. That was no accident. The quietest table in the place had been reserved for management.

Ronda was sitting facing the restaurant's entrance, and had noticed their guests, bosses, and in some ways possibly even friends almost as soon as they had walked in. "They're here," she told her husband, then followed his example as he stood and turned to greet them.

"Hi, Steph," Seth smiled, giving WWE's CEO a peck on the cheek as she returned his greeting in kind.

The two women then shared a brief hug while the men shook hands. When that was done, Ronda received a peck on the cheek from Hunter.

"I'm glad you were able to come," Ronda said to the man who had been her biggest supporter at WWE ever since she had joined the company. Indeed, it was Hunter who had first signed her, back when she had been a referee.

"I'm sorry we couldn't get it worked out sooner," Hunter replied. "But you know how crazy work can be."

Ronda nodded. "Absolutely. But we can sleep when we're dead, right?"

"I really like what you've done with the place," Stephanie was saying as she sat down. Ronda sat beside her, not really considering that her strange question had been ignored. The women were sitting opposite their husbands.

"Thanks," Seth said, taking his own seat. "It was a lot of work getting the place open, and it cost us a small fortune, as you can imagine. But the food and service are good, and that's quickly gotten us a decent reputation. There's sometimes a waiting time of a day or two to get a table in our busiest periods, which says a lot. We're running at a good profit," he concluded, his satisfaction more than apparent.

"Sounds like it's going really well," Hunter said approvingly. "I can't wait to try the food." Four menus had been placed on the end of table prior to their arrival, and Hunter passed them around.

Ronda already knew what she wanted to order, but she pretended to survey the menu anyway as a cover for the fact that she was paying attention to what their guests were going to say about the choices on offer. It was her nature to feel defensive about her restaurant, meaning that positive comments were the only ones she wanted to hear.

"Decisions, decisions," Stephanie said thoughtfully. "I think I'll start with the French Onion Soup."

"I've got my eye on the Veal Carpaccio," Hunter said.

"I'll join you on that one," Seth said. "What are you thinking for your main? I really recommend trying one of the steaks. I'm going to get the New York Strip."

"Well, you are a Steakhouse after all," Hunter smiled. "Okay, I'll go for the Ribeye. Might as well go all-in. How about you, Steph?"

"I'm not a big steak eater," Stephanie admitted to the table. "I'm looking at the fish options. Some of these look really good."

"I like the Steamed Lobster," Ronda said, to join the conversation as much as anything else.

"Okay, you persuaded me," Stephanie said with a smile. "I'll get that."

"What about you, babe?" Seth asked his wife.

"I think I'll get the Caesar Salad, followed by the Grilled Half Chicken. You know I love my chicken."

A server arrived to take their food and drink orders a few moments later. Stephanie's first impression of the service was that it was friendly, professional and efficient. That thought reminded her that she had seen Ronda post pictures a couple of times after she had worked shifts in the restaurant herself. Imagining her providing that level of service was a real stretch. "Do you work here often yourself, Ronda?" she asked.

"Often? No," Ronda said. "But I'll come in if they call me and ask me to help out. It might sound strange, but I kind of enjoy it. It's different when you're working for your own business. Obviously I don't need to explain that to you guys when you're running your family business."

Hunter could have used that opening to start talking about the business-related matters on his agenda for the evening, but he knew that it would be somewhat rude to get into things like that so early in the night. There would be time enough later for that. Two things in particular needed to be discussed: Ronda's impending return to Smackdown, and even more importantly, the fact that her contract was set to expire in the not too distant future.

It was now early August, and her current deal only ran until the end of January. Although she could no longer wrestle, Hunter still considered her to be valuable to WWE because of her movie and TV career. Her latest venture, which had pushed back her return to WWE, had seen her playing the American President in a new network TV series. The show had proven to be very popular, largely due to the quality of the writing and the high production values. The truth of it was that Ronda now had a star presence the likes of which was hard for a wrestling company to attract, which made her an asset that he didn't want to see walking away from the company.

One thing that was likely to go in his favour was that Seth had renewed his own contract only a few months earlier, tying him to WWE for another four years. It seemed obvious that they must have discussed the renewal of her contract at that time, so she would likely have some kind of decision in mind as to whether she would be willing to sign a new deal herself. Hunter hoped that by the time he left The Venice Steakhouse, the very least he would have was a positive indication from her that she wanted to commit herself to WWE in the long term.

The conversation flowed naturally while they waited for their appetisers, helped by the two bottles of wine that they had ordered. There was a bottle of white and a bottle of red to choose from.

It was only natural that they soon found themselves talking shop, since the entire relationship between the two couples revolved around wrestling. They talked about Seth's latest program with AJ Styles, which had been one of most well-received rivalries in recent times. The food took just over ten minutes to arrive, a fact that Seth noted without commenting on it. Ten minutes to get four appetisers out was not bad when the restaurant was almost full to capacity.

"Congratulations on the new show, Ronda. Or should I say Madam President?" Stephanie said with a broad smile after trying her soup. "That's very good," she added, using her spoon to gesture to the bowl.

Ronda beamed right back; the smile that Seth had been lost on since the first time he had seen it. "Thanks, Steph," she said. "But Melissa Shaw is the President, not me. I don't think some people quite get that, though. Would you believe I've had people come up to me in the street or in the supermarket and say that they want to vote for me?"

Hunter and Stephanie both had a good laugh at that. Now that the first course of food had been served, Hunter felt more comfortable steering the conversation towards business. "It'll be a draw having the President on the show," he said as a well calculated joke.

"I honestly think there are people out there who do think she's the President," Seth said, shaking his head in disbelief. "I would make a bet if you showed some of them a picture of Ronda and a picture of the real President and asked them, 'Who is the President of the United States?' they would choose her picture. And we thought wrestling fans who believe kayfabe is real were bad enough."

The laugh Stephanie gave had recognition in it as much as humour. She had been no stranger to abuse in the past when she had played a heel character for so many years. "There are people who take what they see on TV very seriously, there's no doubt about that," she said.

While they had been speaking, Ronda had sat there chewing a mouthful of her salad, contemplating what to say to Hunter. He had pretty obviously been trying to bring up the subject of her return to Smackdown. As was often her style, she defaulted to directness. "So what's the idea for my return?" she asked WWE's Chairman.

Hunter allowed himself a smile as he cut himself a piece of veal. He made Ronda wait until he had eaten it before answering her question. "The plan is to bring you in as the Smackdown GM to replace Steph," Hunter said, knowing that wasn't news to her. They had discussed that aspect even before her retirement; it had just taken longer to happen than Hunter had expected.

"Right. But what will I be doing?" Ronda pushed. "There must be a storyline idea behind it."

"There is," Hunter confirmed after a sip of red wine. "In some ways, you could say we're continuing right from where we left off. You'll be working with Elena D'Agostino again, albeit not wrestling her of course. We're calling someone up from NXT to handle that aspect of it." He left that carrot to dangle in the air.

Ronda remembered back to her last rivalry as an active wrestler. Elena was one of her closest friends in the business, and she considered it an honour to have used her retirement match to put the Italian over as the top heel in women's wrestling. That heat alone had carried Daga through at least six months of competition without the need to generate any more, not that she would have had a problem with doing so. During their rivalry, Elena had proven herself to be a legitimate badass on camera and in the ring, and a class act behind the scenes with how she had conducted herself before and after Ronda hung her boots up for the final time. Both women had known they had a friend for life before the final match at Summerslam had even happened.

The storyline for their rivalry had revolved around Elena kidnapping Ronda at the behest of Cesaro, who had used the fact that she was being held hostage to demand a title match with Seth as a form of ransom payment. The uncomfortable day Ronda had spent tied to a pole in a warehouse to film those scenes was not one of the favourites of her career, but she could not deny that the scenes they had produced had gone over well with the fans, and had played a large part in selling both the D'Agostino - Rousey and Cesaro - Rollins rivalries. There had been an air of gritty realism to the segments that was sadly lacking from a lot of WWE's content.

The first question Ronda had was what exactly Hunter meant by carrying on right from where they had left off. The second question was who he intended to bring up from NXT to wrestle Elena. She certainly knew who she hoped it would be. Charlotte Flair, a long time friend of Ronda's and daughter of her late mentor Ric, had been on NXT for some time now. How quickly the quality of Charlotte's performances had increased had impressed everyone and had soon made her one of the development brand's most popular competitors. It was a matter of time before she got the call up to the next level, and Ronda hoped that was exactly what Hunter had just put on the table.

"Are you telling me I'll get to work with Charlotte?" she asked, doing her best to contain her excitement for the sake of professionalism.

Hunter chuckled once. "Yes, that's what I'm saying. The plan is that Steph will announce Charlotte has been signed to Smackdown and will make her debut at Summerslam, but a challenger is required for the match. I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that Daga will be quick to take offense at someone else getting the spotlight, so she will come out and take the match. At Summerslam, Daga will come out first, but instead of Charlotte's music, yours will hit."

"You'll be trying to keep it a total surprise that Ronda will be there, then?" Seth asked, leaning back in his chair, having made short work of his appetiser.

"Yeah," Hunter confirmed, noting the less than impressed look on Ronda's face. Unsurprisingly, the idea of simply being a manager was not doing it for her. Luckily, there was a lot more to it than that.

"I thought you were talking about me being the Smackdown GM?" Ronda asked. "Now you're saying I'll be managing Charlotte?"

"I'm saying you'll appear at Summerslam as Charlotte's manager," Hunter clarified patiently, knowing from past experience that putting ideas to Ronda was not the easiest of tasks. "It will later be revealed that you had a plan to take over Smackdown right from the start."

"Take over?" Ronda asked with more enthusiasm, the last of her salad forgotten about on her plate. "I like the sound of that, but Steph, you're a face character."

Since the question had been directed to her, Stephanie took over the pitch. It was not a problem, since she knew all of the major details already. "I am a face, which means that in the process of screwing me over, you'll be turning heel."

Seth raised his eyebrows. Not even he was sure how that one was going to go down with his wife.

"A heel turn," Ronda said quietly, thinking about the prospect. Over the years, she had gotten a lot better at accepting things she was asked to do without kicking up a fuss, since seeing a therapist and getting a diagnosis of Oppositional Defiant Disorder. It was for that reason that she put conscious effort into hearing the idea out instead of starting to complain about it right away. "How am I going to go from managing Charlotte to turning heel and taking over Smackdown. Give me the details, guys."

"Remember the kidnapping scenes you did with Daga?" Hunter asked by way of an answer.

"Of course," Ronda said.

"They were some of the most watched videos on our website and Youtube channel in recent times, according to our analytics. Our stats, polls we conduct, stuff like that, also show us that people want to see more of Elena and Ronda. In a way, we're going to give it to them."

"Go on," Ronda urged, feeling her grip on her patience loosening, all the more because she knew Hunter was stringing her along now. Her frustration mounted even more as their server arrived to clear the table, making her wait another minute for an answer.

Much more capable creatively than his wife, Seth felt like he had probably figured out what the idea was by the time the server left the table. "Let me see if I can guess," he said.

"Oh, go on then," Ronda said, brightening up immediately, smiling at her man.

Hunter took a drink from his wine glass and said, "Let's see how close you get. There might be a job in creative for you one day if you can get it right."

Seth laughed. "Okay, here goes. You've talked about Ronda turning heel. You've talked about Daga. You've talked about kidnapping. You've talked about Ronda taking over as Smackdown GM from Steph. So, here's what I think. Daga is going to kidnap Ronda again, but this time it will later be revealed that it was faked. Somehow, Daga will ransom Ronda for Stephanie quitting her job, and that's how she ends up taking over. I'm not sure exactly that's going to work, or if Charlotte is in on it the whole time, too, but how am I doing so far?"

Hunter and Stephanie had good poker faces, but the Chairman had to admit, "That's very good, Seth. You've got the basic outline right."

Not wanting to dwell on the prospect of filming more kidnapping scenes, Ronda focused on the part of the idea that amused her. "I'm held to ransom so that Steph has to quit. I'm guessing Daga will demand the right to appoint a new GM? And she will pick me. That's brilliant," she said, pleasing everyone at the table with the verdict. "I think that's a swerve no one will see coming."

Hunter went on to lay out some more specifics of the idea, then the conversation moved on to other topics while they ate their main courses. It was while they were waiting for desserts that Hunter decided to test the water on the subject of Ronda's contract.

"Ronda, we're thinking of making this Smackdown GM role a fairly long term thing," he began. "The only possible little wrinkle I can see in that is that you're only contracted to us until January." The ideal response he hoped for was for her to tell him not to worry about that, that renewing her contract would not be an issue. However, that wasn't what happened.

"Yeah, I know," Ronda said easily. "I have done some thinking on that, and my agent has mentioned it as well. How about we get my return and the angle with me becoming GM out of the way, then we can look at it? There's no huge rush, right?"

"No huge rush," Hunter said diplomatically, hiding his disappointment perfectly. "Summerslam is in two weeks. We're going have you managing Charlotte for a few weeks before your 'kidnapping' happens, probably on the following pay-per-view. Then that will take a few weeks to play out until you become the new GM. Maybe you're released from captivity a week or two before the October pay-per-view, and Daga can make her choice of appointment at that event."

"Sounds good," Ronda nodded. "Then my agent can meet with you and talk about my contract."

While that exchange had been going on, Stephanie had used a facial expression to ask Seth if Ronda wanted renew. What she was hearing was not as overwhelmingly enthusiastic as she had hoped. At least Seth had given her an 'It'll be fine' expression in reply.

"I'll pencil in a meeting between your agent and Mark Carrano for the week after the October pay-per-view then?" Hunter offered. "Mark's our President of Talent, Live Events and Creative now, my old job. He handles contract negotiations for us now."

"Sure, whatever works," Ronda said, not interested in the business aspect of it. At one time she had seriously thought about investing in WWE and asking for an executive position, but then she had realised that she had just been looking for a way to stick around WWE. There was no need to do that, especially at such a high price. "I'll tell Rob what we've said next time I speak to him," she promised. "I don't think he was my agent last time we had to work something out with each other?"

"No, he wasn't," Hunter said calmly. In the back of his mind, an alarm bell had started ringing.

"He did a lot to get me the role as President Shaw on Executive Orders," Ronda announced.

The alarm bell got louder in Hunter's mind. Ronda had changed agent to a guy with enough clout to get her a lead role on a network TV show. If Hunter had to make a bet, he would have said the guy was the reason Ronda had asked to hold off on contract talks for a while. The closer her contract got to expiring, the more negotiating power her agent had. What if whoever this Rob guy was even had the idea of getting Ronda to leave WWE? It was no secret that the wrestling business was looked down on by some people. Hunter considered that it might be for the best if he got involved in these particular negotiations himself.

By the time he and Stephanie said their goodbyes and thanked Seth and Ronda for what had been a very nice meal and a good night out, Hunter had a headache coming on. He figured that was true in a metaphorical sense also.

"Are you okay, honey?" Stephanie asked when they were back in the privacy of their luxury hire car.

Hunter grimaced. "I've got a feeling this contract renewal is going to be a real headache."