Chapter 4: after
The beer hall wasn’t a hall at all, but a fortified cellar bar beneath a shuttered textile factory, its entrance a single steel door marked only by a scuffed football crest. The air, even from the street, carried the damp-stone smell of spilled beer and male sweat. Max’s hand was a vise around Vanja’s as they descended the narrow concrete steps. He’d said nothing more on the drive over, his jaw a hard line, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. He’d chosen. This was the declaration.
He pushed the door open without knocking.
The room inside was low-ceilinged, hazy with cigarette smoke, lit by flickering fluorescent tubes that hummed like angry insects. Long wooden tables and benches, scarred with generations of knife marks and initials, were mostly empty. At the far end, under a curling poster of a football legend, three men sat.
Tomo Kovac dominated the space, a mountain in a tailored charcoal suit, his presence sucking the air from the room. To his left sat a man Vanja recognized with a jolt: her father, Zoran Vrantz. He was thinner than she remembered, his sharp Balkan features etched with new lines, but his eyes, the samecblue as her brother's, were alert and cold. To Tomo’s right was her cousin, Luka, built like a dockworker, his arms folded over his chest, his gaze flat and assessing.
Three sets of eyes fixed on them. The silence was thicker than the smoke.
Max didn’t hesitate. He stepped forward, placing his body slightly in front of Vanja, a shield of muscle and intention. “You wanted to see me,” he said to his father, his voice steady, but Vanja felt the tremor in the hand still holding hers.
Tomo’s eyes traveled slowly from his son’s face to their joined hands. A faint, unreadable smile touched his lips. He took a slow sip from a small glass of rakija, the anise scent cutting through the beer stench. “I did.” He nodded to the empty bench opposite. “Sit.”
They sat. The wood was cold and hard. Vanja kept her back straight, her eyes meeting her father’s. There was no warmth there, only calculation. “Ćerko,” he said, the Serbian endearment feeling like a bullet. “You look… involved.”
“I am,” she said, her voice clear in the stagnant air.
Luka grunted, a sound of dismissal. His eyes were on Max, scanning the tattoos, the fighter’s posture. “This is the boy?”
“This is Max,” Tomo said, his tone neutral. He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, steepling his fingers. “My son. Who seems to have forgotten where his loyalties lie.”
“My loyalty isn’t yours to give,” Max shot back, a flash of the warehouse anger in his eyes. “Not anymore.”
Zoran Vrantz stirred. He spoke directly to Tomo, ignoring Max completely. “You assured me your family understood boundaries. This,” he flicked a finger toward their clasped hands, “is a complication. My daughter’s work is delicate. This…attachment…endangers her focus.”
“Her focus,” Tomo echoed softly, his eyes now on Vanja. “On exposing my business? On using my son as a source?” He shook his head, a slow, ponderous motion. “The time for that is past. The question now is one of resolution.”
The word hung in the air, heavy with unspoken threats. Max’s grip tightened.
Zoran leaned in, his gaze finally shifting to Max. It was a look of pure, cold appraisal, as if judging livestock. “Young man,” he began, his German accent clipped. “What are your intentions toward my daughter?”
Max blinked, thrown by the old-fashioned phrasing in this den of criminals. He looked from Zoran to Vanja, then to his own father, who watched with icy patience. He swallowed. “I love her.”
It was simple. It was naive. It was the only truth he had left.
Zoran’s expression didn’t change. “Love is a luxury. I asked for intentions.”
Max lifted his chin. “To be with her. To keep her safe.” He glanced at Tomo, a challenge in his eyes. “From everything.”
Tomo’s smile returned, thinner this time. “Noble.”
Zoran waved a dismissive hand. “Nobility is for fairy tales.” He fixed Max with a piercing stare. “When are you marrying my daughter?”
The question landed like a physical blow. Vanja felt Max flinch beside her. Her own breath caught. This was a chess move she hadn’t anticipated.
Max stared at her father, then at Vanja. He saw no guidance in her eyes, only a guarded stillness. He was alone in this. He turned back to Zoran, his youthful face hardening into something older. “I would marry her tomorrow,” he said, the words raw and honest, “if she said yes.”
Tomo exhaled, a slow, satisfied sound. He looked at his son, and for a fleeting second, something like regret flickered in his eyes before it was extinguished by resolve. “You need to ask her first,” Tomo said, his voice calm and cold.
All eyes turned to Vanja. Luka’s were narrowed, watching her reaction. Her father’s were expectant, a deal waiting to be sealed. Tomo’s were unreadable, a man who had just forced a checkmate.
But it was Max she looked at. She saw the fear there, the desperate hope, the unwavering defiance. He had walked into the lion’s den for her. He had stood in front of her. Her cousin, Luka, saw it too—saw Max positioned slightly forward, his body angled to shield hers. A slow, almost imperceptible nod passed from Luka to Vanja. A familial recognition. The shield was accepted.
A smile touched Vanja’s lips, not joyful, but resolute. A path forward, unimaginable hours ago, now crystallized. She stood up, the legs of the bench scraping loudly on the concrete floor. She kept her hand in Max’s, pulling him up with her.
“Come,” she said, her voice cutting through the smoke-filled silence. “We can go now.”
She turned and led him toward the door, away from the three powerful, dangerous men. She didn’t look back. She didn’t need to. She could feel their stares on her back—her father’s shrewd approval, her cousin’s guarded assent, Tomo’s heavy, complicated silence.
The cold night air hit them like a slap. They stumbled up the steps to the empty street, the steel door swinging shut behind them with a final, echoing clang. Max stopped, pulling her to a halt under a broken streetlamp. His face was pale, bewildered.
“What,” he breathed, his voice shaking, “the fuck was that?”
Vanja looked up at him. The adrenaline was draining, leaving a strange, crystalline calm in its wake. “That,” she said, the smile returning, wider now, “was us getting their blessing.”
He stared at her, uncomprehending. “Blessing? That was a fucking threat. A negotiation. My father and your father… they just…”
“They just agreed on a merger,” Vanja finished softly. She reached up, touching his cheek. The rough stubble scratched her palm. “A truce. With me as the territory.” She saw the protest form in his eyes and pressed her fingers to his lips. “No. Listen. It’s the only way. Your father lets me be. My father lets me be. And you…” She traced his lower lip. “You get to keep me. In the open.”
The reality of it began to dawn on him. The impossible victory. The terrifying cost. “A marriage,” he whispered.
“A solution.” She leaned closer, her body aligning with his in the darkness. “So, I hope you already have a ring in mind.”
He kissed her then. It was nothing like the warehouse or her bedroom. It was desperate, grateful, and deeply scared. It tasted of rakija and fear and a future that had just been violently carved out of the dark. She kissed him back with equal ferocity, her teeth scraping his lip, her hands fisting in his jacket.
They drove back to her place in a charged silence. This time, there was no lingering scent of her on him from earlier—it had been washed away by the cold sweat of the meeting. The energy between them was different. Less about claiming, more about consolidating. About sealing the pact.
Inside her apartment, Mr. Smith meowed plaintively, weaving around their legs. They ignored him. Max pushed her against the front door as soon as it closed, his mouth finding hers again. This kiss was slower, deeper, a deliberate ritual. His hands went to the hem of her sweater, pulling it over her head. He did the same with his own shirt, letting them fall to the floor. Skin met skin, still cool from the night air.
He walked her backward, through the familiar clutter of her life—past the stacked books, the sociology journals, the cat’s water bowl—into the bedroom. He laid her down on the bed, but there was no violence now. His movements were deliberate, almost reverent. He undressed her completely, then himself, his eyes never leaving her body.
He knelt between her legs, but instead of descending on her, he just looked. His gaze was a physical weight, tracing every curve, every scar, every detail as if memorizing a map of a newly acquired land. “Mine,” he said, the word a low vow.
“Prove it,” she whispered, arching her back.
He didn’t use his mouth. He leaned down, bracing himself over her, one hand sliding under the small of her back to lift her hips. The other guided himself to her entrance. He pushed in with a single, controlled, deep thrust, seating himself to the hilt. They both gasped at the fullness, the intimacy of it.
He began to move, a slow, grinding rhythm that had nothing to do with frantic passion. It was a ceremony. Each withdrawal was a promise remembered; each penetration was the promise fulfilled. He fucked her with a profound, focused intensity, his eyes locked on hers. The room was silent save for the wet, rhythmic sound of their joining and their ragged breathing.
“You’re my wife,” he groaned, the title unfamiliar and potent on his tongue. “Say it.”
“I’m your wife,” she moaned, the fiction already feeling like fate.
“This cunt,” he whispered, driving deeper, “is my cunt. This come inside you is my claim. Nobody else. Ever.”
“Nobody else,” she echoed, the words a shackle and a sanctuary.
His pace increased, the solemnity burning away into raw need. The bed began to rock. His thumb found her clit, rubbing tight, focused circles. The orgasm that built was different—deeper, slower, a tectonic shift rather than an explosion. It rolled through her in powerful, endless waves, milking him, pulling him over the edge with her.
He came with a broken shout, his body collapsing onto hers, his release flooding her hot and deep. He stayed inside her, buried, as their heartbeats slowed.
Later, in the dark, with Mr. Smith purring at their feet, Max spoke into the silence. “He’ll expect a wedding. Soon. Big. With all his people. And yours.”
“I know,” Vanja said, staring at the ceiling.
“It won’t be real,” he said, but it sounded like a question.
She turned her head on the pillow to look at him. In the dim light from the street, his face was all sharp angles and shadows, young and old at once. She thought of the warehouse, the beer hall, the three men at the table. She thought of his body shielding hers. She thought of the ring that didn’t yet exist on her finger.
She kissed his shoulder, a silent answer. The line between real and not real had dissolved in the sweat-slicked dark. There was only the deal. And them, at the center of it, holding on.