Chapter 3: Concrete and Cognac
The bass from the club was a phantom heartbeat in her bones, a relentless thrum that had followed her home and into a sleepless night. Vanja stared at the ceiling of her studio apartment, the first grey light of dawn etching the outlines of the furniture. Her wrist still felt the ghost of Dren’s grip, her lips the shocking, unwelcome pressure of his kiss. It hadn’t been desire. It had been a claim. A territorial stamp in the dark.
She threw off the covers, the cool air a shock on her skin. In the bathroom, she scrubbed her face until it was raw, trying to wash away the feeling of being cornered, of being someone’s possession. The face in the mirror was pale, the golden-green of her eyes dimmed by fatigue and a simmering anger. She was a master’s student who had just beaten Manuel Neuer at FIFA. She was not a prize to be fought over.
The university library was her sanctuary. The hushed silence, the smell of old paper and dust, was a balm. She spread her books on kinesthetic theory across the worn wooden desk, building a fortress of academia around herself. For a few hours, she was just a mind, wrestling with complex ideas. The world of cameras and footballers and dangerous, charismatic men receded.
Her phone buzzed, vibrating against the wood. Monika’s name flashed. Vanja considered ignoring it, but the memory of her friend’s sheepish face at the party softened her.
You alive? Monika’s text read. Last night was… intense. In multiple ways.
Vanja typed a quick reply. Alive. Studying.
He asked about you.
Vanja didn’t need to ask who. The message hung in the digital space between them, heavy with implication.
Neuer? she wrote back, playing dumb.
DON’T PLAY WITH ME. The other one. The intense, smoldering, ‘I-will-burn-down-your-village’ one. Dren. He found Michael after you left. Asked what you were to the team. It was weird.
A cold trickle of dread seeped through Vanja’s carefully constructed calm. What did Michael say?
He said you were a friend of mine. But Dren just nodded, like he was filing the information away. He’s… a lot, Vanja.
He’s nothing, Vanja typed, the lie tasting bitter. Just family drama.
She put the phone face down, but the focus was broken. The equations on the page blurred into a meaningless jumble. He was circling, his interest piqued not just by her, but by her proximity to his world. The world he apparently had insights into.
The rest of the day passed in a fog of distracted studying. By evening, a restless energy had taken hold. She pulled on her running gear, needing the physical purge, the rhythm of her feet on the pavement to drown out the noise in her head.
She ran along the Isar, the river a dark, swirling ribbon under the twilight sky. The cold air burned her lungs, each breath a sharp counterpoint to the memory of the club’s stifling heat. She pushed herself harder, faster, until her muscles screamed and her mind was blissfully, finally empty.
Returning to her building, sweat cooling on her skin, she felt almost clean. Almost free. She fumbled for her keys at the main entrance, her breath pluming in the chill air.
A shadow detached itself from the doorway’s recess. “You run like you’re being chased.”
Vanja jumped, her keys clattering to the stone step. Dren stood there, hands in the pockets of his long wool coat, his expression unreadable.
“What are you doing here?” Her voice was sharp, laced with a fear that infuriated her.
“I was in the neighborhood.” His gaze traveled over her, from her damp hair to her running tights. It was a clinical, assessing look that made her feel more exposed than she had on any photoshoot. “We didn’t finish our conversation.”
“There is no conversation to have.” She bent to retrieve her keys, her fingers trembling. “You don’t get to ambush me. At a club. At my home. Nowhere.”
He moved then, not with the aggressive speed from the club, but with a slow, deliberate grace that was somehow more threatening. He stopped just inside her personal space, the scent of him—clean, cold air and that expensive cologne—washing over her. “You left a mark on Manuel Neuer. He doesn’t stop talking about it. The brainy model who schooled him. It’s all very amusing to them.”
“I don’t care what they find amusing.”
“You should.” His voice was low, almost conversational. “They are children playing a game. They live in a bubble. You step into that bubble, they will pop it, and you will be left with nothing. Your fifteen minutes of fame. A few more followers on Instagram. Then what?”
“Then I get my degree and have a life you couldn’t possibly understand,” she shot back, her anger giving her courage. “A life that doesn’t involve lurking in doorways or making claims on people who don’t want you.”
His eyes darkened. The casual mask slipped, revealing the raw intensity beneath. “You think I am lurking? You think this is a game? My grandfather asks about you. He sees the pictures. He hears things. He wonders why you are making a spectacle of yourself with these Germans when you have a place with us.”
“A place doing what? Being your…” She trailed off, unable to even give it a name.
“My what, Vanja?” he challenged, his voice dropping to a whisper. He reached out, but this time he didn’t grab her. His fingers just brushed a stray strand of hair from her cheek, the contact so shockingly gentle it stole her breath. “You have no idea what I want. You see a monster because it is easier than seeing a man.”
For a terrifying second, she was swayed. The contrast between the violent kiss and this almost-tenderness was disorienting. Then she remembered the grip on her wrist, the pressure against the wall.
She took a step back, breaking the contact. “I see a man who doesn’t know how to take no for an answer.”
A slow, dangerous smile touched his lips. It didn’t reach his eyes. “No,” he said softly. “I just don’t accept it.”
He turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing in the quiet street. He didn’t look back.
Vanja stood there, shivering in the cold, long after his car had pulled away. The silence felt heavier now, pregnant with his promise. He wasn’t going away. This wasn’t over.
Inside her apartment, the message light on her landline was blinking. A rare, archaic sound. She pressed the button, her heart a frantic drum in her chest.
A voice, older, accented, and laced with a warmth that felt entirely out of place, filled the room. “Vanja, draga, it’s your great-aunt Lena. Boban and I, we are in Frankfurt for a few days. We would like to see you. Come to dinner tomorrow. Dren will bring you. Seven o’clock.”
The message ended with a click.
It wasn’t an invitation. It was a summons. And the mention of Dren’s name was a deliberate, unmistakable thread, pulling her back into a web she had been trying so desperately to escape. She looked around her small, independent apartment, the fortress she had built with her own two hands, and for the first time, it felt flimsy, its walls nothing but paper.
The blinking red light on her landline felt like a staring eye. A dinner with Boban and Lena wasn't a social call; it was a tribunal, with Dren as both bailiff and implied verdict. She deleted the message, the action feeling futile, like tearing up a summons that had already been recorded.
Her phone buzzed with a different, welcome salvation. Monika’s name glowed on the screen. “Don’t say no,” her friend’s voice chirped, bypassing hello. “A bunch of the guys are going to that new immersive art exhibit tomorrow. It’s all projections and weird sounds. You’ll love it, it’s practically academic.”
Vanja let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “An exhibit? That’s… surprisingly cultured.”
“I know, right? I suggested clubbing but Joshua said he’d rather ‘stimulate his mind.’” Monika’s impression of Kimmich’s earnest tone was spot-on. “So, you’re in. It’s a distraction from… you know. The everything.”
“I’m in,” Vanja said, the decision a solid weight in her stomach, a counterbalance to the formless dread of the dinner invitation.
The next afternoon, her agent called. The voice on the other end was brisk, peppered with the thrilling, impersonal language of high finance. “Boss wants you for their new fragrance. A full campaign—still photos, a sixty-second film. The shoot is in a month in Majorca. They’re offering two hundred and fifty thousand. Upfront.”
Vanja’s knees felt weak. She sat down hard on her sofa. The number was abstract, then it was very, very concrete. It was walls that weren’t paper. It was a door with a lock only she controlled.
“Do I need to repeat the number?” her agent asked, mistaking her silence for disbelief.
“No,” Vanja managed, her voice strangled. “I heard it.”
She called Monika the second she hung up. “The Adidas money was one thing,” she stammered, the words tumbling out. “But Boss just offered me a quarter of a million. For a perfume.”
Monika’s shriek was pure, undiluted joy. “Vanja! That’s insane! What are you going to do with it?”
“Soon I’ll be able to buy an apartment,” Vanja said, the statement feeling like a vow. “A real one. Mine.”
Monika laughed. “I’d say I’m jealous, but I’d just spend it on clothes. Mostly. You have a rich boyfriend, you don’t need to worry,” Vanja teased, the normalcy of the banter a lifeline.
“You could too,” Monika shot back, her tone light but pointed. “But you are too stubborn.”
Vanja cringed, the ghost of Dren’s cologne seeming to linger in the room. “I don’t like the power dynamics. It feels… transactional.”
“You are gorgeous and smart, you are the catch,” Monika insisted, her voice firm. “So any dynamic is in your favour. You hold the cards.”
Vanja slapped her hand against the sofa cushion in mock frustration. “You are only saying this because you are my friend.”
Monika’s grin was audible through the phone. “Maybe. But come tomorrow, the art thing. It should be fun.”
“It should,” Vanja agreed, the weight of the bank transfer solid in her mind, a shield against other, darker pressures. “I’ll be there.”
The immersive art exhibit was a cathedral of light and sound, a vast, dark space where digital forests bloomed across the walls and the floor shifted underfoot with cascading pixels. Vanja found Monika near a projection of a swirling, star-filled nebula, her face bathed in blue light. “You made it,” Monika whispered, linking her arm through Vanja’s and pulling her deeper into the pulsating heart of the installation.
They found the group clustered in a room where rain fell upwards, defying gravity in silent, shimmering sheets. Joshua Kimmich stood with a woman, her posture as straight and considered as his. She had sharp, intelligent eyes and a neat blonde bob that didn’t dare move. “Vanja, this is Lina,” Joshua said, his introduction neutral.
“So, you’re the model from the Adidas campaign,” Lina said, her smile polite but her gaze performing a quick, thorough assessment. It wasn’t unkind, but it was judgmental, placing Vanja neatly into a box.
“That’s not all I am,” Vanja replied, the words coming out firmer than she’d intended.
Joshua’s eyebrow lifted almost imperceptibly. Aleksandar Pavlovic, who had been watching the digital rain, turned his head to listen.
“Lina’s a law student,” Joshua added, a simple statement that carried the weight of an entire argument. “Third year.” The message was clear. Lina was smart. Lina had substance.
Vanja nodded, meeting Lina’s gaze directly. “That’s cool. I took some pre-law modules during my BA.”
The shift in the air was immediate. All eyes snapped to her. The upward-falling rain seemed to pause. “Your BA?” Lina asked, the polite smile tightening.
“Yeah, back in Switzerland. I’m in Munich to finish my MA and start my PhD.” The words hung in the dark, charged space, dismantling Lina’s invisible upper hand piece by piece.
Lina’s expression cooled, the friendly pretense evaporating into a more genuine, competitive sharpness. Aleksandar Pavlovic, bless him, broke the tension with a wide grin. “That’s how we do it,” he said, his voice a warm rumble. “Beauty and brains.”
Joshua said nothing. He just watched Vanja, his earlier curiosity from the photoshoot and the party now sharpened into something deeper, more analytical. He looked like he was re-calculating a complex play on the field, all his initial assumptions proven wrong.
“What’s your PhD focus?” Lina asked, her tone now purely professional, a lawyer cross-examining a witness.
“The cognitive load of decision-making under extreme pressure in elite athletes,” Vanja said. She glanced at Joshua. “It’s why I noticed your stance was off during the shoot. It’s all connected.”
A projection of a massive, digital whale glided across the ceiling above them, casting shifting patterns of light over their faces. Tom Bischof, who had been lingering on the periphery, finally stepped forward. “I still don’t get how you beat Neuer,” he said, shaking his head in amused disbelief.
“She out-thought him,” Joshua stated, his voice quiet but definitive. It wasn’t a question. He was finally seeing the full board, and her position on it was nothing like he had presumed.
Monika squeezed Vanja’s arm, a silent signal of victory. As the group moved on to the next room, she leaned in, her whisper barely audible over the ethereal soundtrack. “See? I told you. You hold all the cards.”
Vanja allowed herself a small, private smile, the ghost of Dren’s threatening presence momentarily banished by the solid, earned respect in Joshua Kimmich’s eyes. For the first time all week, she felt entirely in control.