stephanie and dad

On the top floor at the headquarters of World Wrestling Entertainment, a relaxed Vince McMahon sat alone in his private office. It was a crisp Monday morning in Connecticut and Vince planned to spend a few hours enjoying one of his favorite past-times: firing his employees.

WWE’s signature event, WrestleMania, had been an enormous success just a few months earlier. But no matter how much money was rolling in, it never felt like enough. More than one wrestler on his roster had stopped earning their keep, and it was time for Vince to look over his list of talent and cut the dead weight. Why continue paying them when he could put that money in his own pocket?

Once he decided who was getting let go, Vince would take them aside before that evening’s show to tell them. He always enjoyed the look on a wrestler’s face when he, or she, realized that their career was over. Sitting on Vince’s desk were printed-out bios of his talent roster, complete with an analysis of how much merchandise they were selling and how their matches did in the television ratings.

Five firings sounded like a nice round number this time, and he began scanning through the pages with a close eye.

Just then, his intercom broke the silence in the room.

“Mr. McMahon?”

Vince leaned forward to hit the button on his phone.

“Yeah?”

“You have a… a visitor.”

Just ‘a visitor’? Someone not even important enough to be named? Vince gave it a split second’s thought and conveyed his response.

“Busy.”

He only needed to utter that one word to end the conversation. A man of Vince’s stature was not to be bothered while he was working. But this time, the crackle of his secretary’s voice answered back.

“Um, Mr. McMahon… it’s Stephanie, sir.”

Vince’s ears perked up. A grin started to spread across his face.

“Oh, really?”

Once the apple of his eye, Vince’s daughter Stephanie now found herself on the outs with her father. During the previous year, as Vince’s critics remarked that his grip on sanity was becoming more and more tenuous, his attitude towards his only daughter had grown increasingly sour.

It had all started back at the beginning of 2003. Stephanie had been appointed by her father as the General Manager of WWE’s Smackdown program, but he blamed her for several upsetting incidents. First was the signing of wrestling legend Hulk Hogan. Although Hogan first became famous under Vince’s watchful eye, he had jumped to Ted Turner’s WCW in the mid-1990’s and nearly put Vince’s company out of business.

Vince was extremely unhappy to see Hogan return. After a match between the two at WrestleMania, Vince came up with a way to get Hogan out of his hair once and for all. Unable to break the contract Stephanie had approved, he decided that he simply wouldn’t use Hogan anymore on WWE television. Hogan would be paid to sit at home. But the Hulkster outsmarted Vince by creating a character called “Mr. America”, which he shopped around between Raw and Smackdown, WWE’s two rival programs.

Not wanting her show to lose a much-hyped new superstar, Stephanie signed Mr. America without meeting him. But when he made his first appearance, it was clear that Mr. America was simply Hulk Hogan under a red, white, and blue mask. Vince was furious. Although he was later able to prove Hogan’s identity and fire him for good, he still blamed his daughter for the aggravation.

Next came the first true sign of Vince’s failing mental health. Before his departure, Hogan had introduced the world to Zach Gowen, a courageous young man who’d lost a leg after a tough fight with cancer. Even despite his handicap, Zach followed through on his dreams and trained to become a professional wrestler.

All he wanted was a shot at getting a WWE contract, but Vince was disgusted. He didn’t want a “crippled freak” wrestling for his promotion. When Zach persisted, Vince lost all self control and physically attacked him. Stephanie stuck up for Zach, which only upset her father more. Vince signed Zach to a contract, but only so he could have the pleasure of fighting the handicapped wrestler himself. Gowen battled for all he was worth, but he didn’t have enough to overcome Vince’s dirty tactics.

With those hurdles out of the way, Vince began to focus on his daughter and the problems she had caused him. Rather than fire Stephanie from her position as General Manager, Vince decided that he would embarrass her, humiliate her, and force her to quit. He made her wrestle male WWE superstars, some as large as 300 pounds. He made her watch as he flaunted his affair with one of the many WWE starlets he had on his arm. Stephanie was beaten physically and emotionally, but refused to give her father the satisfaction of seeing her quit.

Finally, with his sanity at an all-time low point, Vince decided to take matters into his own hands. With her position as GM at stake, he forced his daughter into a match against himself. Stephanie responded with an emotional interview, swearing to have nothing more to do with her dad if the match took place.

“I’m proud of who I am, and I don’t want to be the same as him,” she said tearfully. “I never thought in my wildest dreams that my father would ever put his hands on me. If this match goes through, if he thinks we’ll ever have any kind of relationship again, then he’s dead wrong.”

But the match went on as planned. Vince proceeded to physically assault Stephanie, throwing her around, slamming her down, and eventually choking her lifeless until her mother Linda threw in the towel to save her. Afterwards, Vince pushed his wife to the mat and left arm-in-arm with his mistress.

That had been late in 2003, but Vince could still feel the high of having defeated his rebellious daughter. The notion that he’d driven her out of the family business, leaving her with nothing, never ceased to bring a smile to his face when he thought about it.

But, out of the blue, here she was paying a visit to his office. She could only be here for one thing, Vince knew. She’d had enough of trying to live an ordinary life. She wanted to get her job back.

“Send her in.”

–CH 2–

Vince watched as his 25-year old daughter stepped slowly into his office. He couldn’t help smirking as he noticed her outfit. Stephanie was dressed in a freshly pressed business suit, the kind of clothing she wore when she wanted to look grown up.

She may have been an adult now, but Vince wasn’t fooled. He’d watched her during her time as the General Manager, the way she dressed so professionally and projected such confidence. Deep down, though, Vince knew that Stephanie was the same scared little girl she’d always been.

The usually proud young woman now seemed timid and nervous as she stepped inside and closed the office door behind her. Barely able to look her father in the eye, Stephanie pushed a strand of her long brown hair from her face as Vince rose up from his desk.

“Well, well, well! What do we have here?”

He made no attempt to hide his jovial mood. He was going to enjoy this.

“Stephanie McMahon, here to see ME? Why, I thought you never wanted to speak to me again!”

Stephanie shifted her feet and glanced at the floor, saying nothing in response.

“Please, have a seat. Tell me, to what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

He sat back down at his desk with a big, shit-eating grin on his face. Stephanie took a seat on one of the chairs in front of him.

“Daddy, I… I want to talk to you. I know I’ve made some mistakes, and…”

Her words trailed off as Vince began to chuckle. Rising out of his chair again, he walked to the other side of his desk and leaned against the edge, standing just a few feet from her.

“You know, Stephanie, I fully expected you to come back here at some point. Begging. Pleading. Telling me how wrong you were, admitting what a disappointment you’ve been. I just didn’t expect it this soon!”

Stephanie hung her head low with shame as Vince continued his lecture.

“The things you said to me… the things you DID to me… I… I was hurt. I was truly hurt. You were Daddy’s little girl! I did everything for you. And then you turned your back on me! Just like your mother! Just like Hogan! Just like all the rest of ’em!”

Glancing up with pleading eyes, Stephanie looked at her father.

“Daddy, I’m sorry! Can’t we… can’t we put this behind us?”

Vince looked down at her. She looked so weak, so pitiful. It made him feel physically ill. She was a McMahon! She had his genes! How could she be so pathetic?

“You know I like to pride myself on being a forgiving man, Stephanie. But to be quite frank… you make me SICK.”

Surely feeling the sting of her father’s cruel words, Stephanie’s head sunk as she began to sob in her chair. Disgusted by the display, Vince had half a mind to pull her up and heave her out of the office like a worthless sack of garbage.

But before he could act on the thought, something pulled his gaze lower. His eyes moved away from her face and traveled down to the ample amount of cleavage that was visible just above the buttons on his daughter’s blazer. He hadn’t even noticed it before, but he stared openly, watching the way the swell of her large breasts lightly jiggled while she wept.

Like a lightbulb going off in his head, Vince suddenly had an idea. Possibly the most sick, depraved idea that his warped mind had ever come up with.

–CH 3–

“Stephanie, on second thought, maybe I’ve been a little harsh,” he told her, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Maybe we can patch things up after all.”

She looked up and wiped her eyes.

“Oh, thank you, Daddy. I’ll do anything, I swear. I want to make things right between us.”

Vince grinned smugly.

“I’m glad to hear you say that.”

Resting back on the edge of his desk, he began to masterfully weave his evil plan.

“I’ve hired back a lot of people to this company, Stephanie. People I swore I’d never work with again. You know that.”

She nodded.

“People assume that I do it for the good of the business, but that’s not always true.