Chapter 4: The Boardroom Conquest
The flight from Liverpool to Berlin was a descent from a thunderstorm into a deep-freeze. Vanja sat in the first-class cabin, her body an archive of conflicting sensations. The dull, pleasant ache between her legs was a ghost of Klopp. The stiff, formal blouse she wore covered the faint redness where Voller’s grip had been on her arm during their call. She sipped black coffee, scrolling through tactical databases on her tablet, but her mind kept replaying the encrypted file she’d written. He came inside me. The words were a live wire. She switched to the official scouting report, forcing clinical language onto the screen.
Berlin greeted her with a damp, grey chill. The DFB headquarters, a monument to German football’s cold efficiency, loomed over the Spree. The lobby was a cathedral of polished marble and muted ambition, the air smelling of floor wax and expensive cologne. Whispers followed her—the wunderkind, the girl. She ignored them, her heels clicking a steady, assertive rhythm toward the bank of elevators.
His secretary, a pale man with wary eyes, merely nodded her through. “He’s expecting you, Frau Oldenburg.”
The door to the presidential office was a slab of blond oak, intimidating in its simplicity. She knocked once, entered.
The room was vast, all clean lines and muted prestige. A wall of glass looked out onto the river. Rudi Voller stood before it, his back to her, a silhouette against the leaden sky. He wasn’t the DFB President now; he was the legend, the man who’d plucked her from obscurity, who’d called her his most brilliant gamble. He turned. In his mid-sixties, he retained the powerful frame of the striker he’d been, though time had softened it into an authoritative solidity. His face was handsome in a weathered, severe way, his hair a close-cropped silver. His eyes, a pale blue, missed nothing.
“Vanja.” His voice was a dry rasp, familiar. He didn’t smile. “Close the door.”
She did. The click of the latch was final.
“Your report from Liverpool was… concise,” he began, moving to stand behind his monolithic desk, not sitting. He picked up a single sheet of paper—her sanitized, three-paragraph assessment. “It lacks your usual insight. Almost as if your attention was elsewhere.”
He let the statement hang. The room was silent, the only sound the faint hum of the climate control. The memory of Klopp’s roar, the feel of the stadium glass against her cheek, felt like a hallucination here.
“The players were typical. The tactics, straightforward. There wasn’t much to say,” she replied, her voice level.
“There is always much to say.” He came around the desk, stopping an arm’s length away. He still moved with an athlete’s controlled grace. He studied her face, her neck, as if looking for clues. “You met with Jürgen Klopp.”
“It was his private box. It would have been rude to refuse.”
“Rude.” He repeated the word as if it were alien. “Klopp is a passionate man. Charismatic. He likes beautiful things. He enjoys breaking them to see how they work.” His gaze dropped to the top button of her blouse. “Did he try to break you, Vanja?”
Her pulse quickened. “No.”
“Good.” He took another step closer. The scent of him—sandaled wood and starch—filled the space between them. It was the smell of power, of old, unmovable structures. “Because you are a DFB asset. A precious one. You belong here. In this building. To this nation’s project. Not as some… plaything for a populist entertainer.”
His hand came up, not quickly, but with an inevitability that froze her. His fingers, cool and dry, began to work open the buttons of her blouse. She stood perfectly still, watching his face. There was no lust in his expression, only a cold, proprietary assessment. This was different from Klopp’s hungry joy. This was an audit.
“He touched you here?” Voller murmured, the blouse falling open. He pushed the silk of her bra aside, his thumb circling a nipple. It hardened treacherously under his touch, a purely physiological betrayal. “Did he get his big, working-class hands on what we built?”
She said nothing. Her mind split. One part recorded the sensation, the clinical pressure of his thumb. The other part floated near the ceiling, observing the scene: the mentor, the protégé, the transaction.
“You are quiet.” He unbuttoned her skirt, letting it pool at her feet. He stepped back, his eyes roaming her body in the grey daylight—the curves he’d helped make iconic, the legs that strode training pitches with his authority. His own arousal was evident, a thick bulge straining the fine wool of his trousers. It was a detached arousal, a pride of ownership. “That is good. You understand the hierarchy.”
He turned and walked to his desk, clearing a space with a sweep of his arm. Files and a sleek tablet clattered to the carpet. “Come here.”
She walked to the desk, the marble floor cold under her stockinged feet. He sat in his high-backed leather chair, its upholstery the color of dried blood. He unzipped his trousers, freeing his cock. It was thick, veined, erect with a potency that belied his age. He was still a powerful man, and the sheer, hypocritical need of it—the lecture about propriety while he sat there exposed—sent a dangerous, reflexive heat through her belly.
“Over the desk. Present yourself to me.” His tone was instructional, as if directing a training drill.
She bent forward, her upper body pressed against the cold, polished wood. The leather chair creaked as he scooted forward. His hands gripped the swell of her ass, his fingers digging in. He spread her cheeks, and she felt the cool air on her most intimate skin, followed by the blunt, insistent pressure of his cockhead at her entrance. She was still sensitive from Liverpool, stretched and used. He didn’t care.
He pushed in with a single, relentless thrust. It was a fullness that stole her breath, a stretching occupation that was less about passion than possession. He groaned, a low, satisfied sound deep in his chest.
“Mein gott, you are always so ready,” he muttered, his hands tightening on her hips. “Always such a good, wet little girl for us. Even when you’ve been letting others sample the merchandise.”
He began to fuck her in a steady, punishing rhythm. Each thrust drove her body harder against the unyielding desk. There was no artistry here, no playful discovery. This was a reaffirmation of terms. His grip was iron, his pace metronomic. The only sounds were the wet slap of skin, his grunted breaths, and the faint squeak of the chair’s mechanisms.
“You will be smart,” he panted, driving into her. “You will be discreet. You will remember who opened the door for you. Who keeps it open.” He leaned over her, his chest pressing against her back, his mouth at her ear. His voice was a gritty whisper. “Klopp fucked you in a glass box. I fuck you in the heart of the machine. Which is more real, Vanja? Tell me.”
She couldn’t speak. The friction was building a treacherous response in her traitorous body. The shame of it, the sheer power of being taken so completely by this old, powerful man who saw her as a living investment, coiled tight in her gut. He felt her inner muscles flutter and his rhythm grew ragged.
“That’s it,” he hissed. “Come for your president. Show me you know where you belong. Come on this old cock that owns you.”
His words, the brutal, hypocritical force of his thrusts, the degrading certainty of his ownership—it tipped her over. A violent, silent orgasm ripped through her, wringing a choked gasp from her throat. Her vision whited out at the edges, her body convulsing around his invading length.
Her climax triggered his. With a final, deep snarl, he buried himself to the hilt and came. She felt the hot, pulsing flood fill her, a visceral claim. He held himself there, shuddering, his weight heavy on her back.
For a long minute, there was only the sound of their labored breathing fogging the polished wood of the desk. Slowly, he softened and withdrew. A wet, messy trickle followed. He righted himself with a sigh, tucking himself away with the tidy efficiency of a man concluding business.
“Stand up.”
Her legs trembled. She pushed herself upright, feeling his release beginning to seep down her inner thigh. She didn’t try to cover herself. He surveyed her, her flushed skin, her unfocused eyes, the evidence of him on her. He looked satisfied, like an architect reviewing a solid foundation.
“Clean yourself up. The bathroom is through there.” He gestured to a discreet door. “We have a working lunch with the finance committee in one hour. The blue dress, I think. It projects the correct… modernity.”
He returned to his chair as if nothing had happened, tapping his tablet to life. Dismissed.
In the stark, white bathroom, she cleaned up with the same clinical detachment he’d used. The cold water on her face helped. She looked in the mirror. The woman who had screamed into Anfield’s glass was gone. In her place was the asset, composed, if pale. She repaired her makeup, re-dressed. When she emerged, he was on a call, speaking about sponsorship clauses. He didn’t look up.
She let herself out. The walk down the long, quiet corridor seemed to take forever. She felt hollowed out, scraped clean of Klopp’s fire and filled instead with a chilling, permanent sediment.
As she approached the elevators, another door opened. Rudi Völler, the other Rudi, her mentor, stepped out. He was in a tracksuit, a file under his arm. His kind, weathered face broke into a warm smile that faltered as he got closer. His eyes, sharp and experienced, scanned her face, her too-perfect posture.
“Vanja? Meine liebe, what is it?” He stepped closer, his voice dropping. He didn’t touch her. He just looked, his gaze seeing past the armor. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Or fought one.”
The genuine concern in his voice, so different from the cold possession she’d just endured, was a sudden, unexpected chink in her armor. For a terrifying second, she thought she might fracture.
“It’s nothing, Rudi,” she said, her voice only slightly unsteady. “A long trip. Presidential debriefings. You know how it is.”
He held her gaze, his own filling with a dawning, sorrowful understanding. He knew the machine better than anyone. He knew the price of admission. He sighed, a heavy sound. “Go home. Rest. The football will still be here tomorrow.”
She nodded, unable to speak further. The elevator arrived. As the doors closed on his worried face, she leaned against the mirrored wall. Two Rudis. One who owned her, one who cared for her. Both part of the same system. The thunderstorm in Liverpool felt a million miles away, a dream of impossible freedom. Here, in the chill heart of the machine, the only heat was the shameful, lingering dampness between her legs, and the cold, clear understanding that her brilliance was just another.
The thunderstorm in Liverpool felt a million miles away, a dream of impossible freedom. Here, in the chill heart of the machine, the only heat was the shameful, lingering dampness between her legs, and the cold, clear understanding that her brilliance was just another currency.
She walked to her car, the Berlin drizzle a fine mist on her skin. The engine purred to life, but she didn’t drive. She sat in the sterile underground garage, hands on the wheel, and replayed the last hour. The president’s dry hands. His detached, pounding rhythm. The way he called her a ‘good little girl’ while spilling inside her. A fuse lit in her gut, not shame, but a furious, clarifying rage. They all wanted to own her. Klopp with his passion, the president with his cold authority. Even dear Rudi with his paternal concern. They all wanted a piece of the prodigy.
Fine.
Let them hunger.
But she would decide the menu. She would decide the portions. And she would start with the one who thought he was safe. She pulled out her phone, her thumb moving with decisive taps.
Rudi. The debriefing was brutal. I need a friendly ear. Dinner? Somewhere quiet.
His reply was almost immediate. Always for you. Gasthof Zehlendorf, 8pm. I’ll book the corner table.
The Gasthof was all dark wood and soft light, smelling of roasted venison and old wine. Rudi Völler stood as she approached, pulling out her chair with an old-world courtesy the president would have mocked. He’d changed into a simple navy sweater. He looked like what he was: a retired legend, comfortable in his skin, his eyes holding a warmth that felt alien after the afternoon.
“You look better,” he said after they’d ordered. “Still tired. But less like a ghost.”
“The ghost is still there,” Vanja said, sipping her Riesling. “It just decided to haunt someone else for a while.” She let a smile touch her lips, fragile, meant only for him. She leaned forward, the neckline of her simple black dress gaping just slightly. “Thank you for this. You’re the only one who doesn’t want something from me.”
He looked pained. “Vanja, everyone wants something from you. Because you have everything to give. The trick is knowing who wants for you, not just from you.” He spoke of pressures, of his own early days, his voice a low, gravelly comfort. She listened, her eyes on his, her foot occasionally brushing his calf under the table. A flicker of confusion, then a faint flush, crossed his features. The paternal mask slipped, just for a second, revealing a man.
It was raining harder when they left, a steady Berlin downpour. He walked her to her car. “Drive safe,” he said, his hand on her shoulder, a brotherly squeeze.
She turned under his hand, the rain plastering her dark blonde hair to her cheeks. “I don’t want to drive yet.” She looked up at him, letting the façade crack completely, showing him the raw, bewildered girl underneath the tactical genius. “Can we just sit? Talk? Your car is bigger.”
Concern flooded his face. “Of course. Of course, mein kind.”
His car was a sensible Audi, spacious and leather-scented. They sat in the back, the rain drumming a frantic rhythm on the roof, isolating them in a grey, watery world. She let the silence stretch, let him watch her stare blankly through the fogged glass.
“He fucked me, Rudi,” she said, her voice hollow. “Over his desk. Like I was a report to be filed.”
Völler drew in a sharp, pained breath. “The president.” It wasn’t a question. His fist clenched on his knee. “That arrogant, hypocritical schwein.”
She turned to him, tears welling—real tears, born of genuine fury and calculated performance. “He said I belonged to the machine. That I was his good little girl.” A tear tracked down her cheek. “Am I? Just a thing you all pass around?”
“No.” The word was a punch. He reached for her, his hands cupping her face, his thumbs wiping her tears. His touch was nothing like the president’s. It was fervent, desperate. “You are brilliant. You are everything. He doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as you.” His eyes searched hers, his face inches away. The paternal concern was now a turbulent, dangerous storm. The power dynamic she had known for years was crystallizing, melting, and reforming into something else entirely.
She saw it. The hunger. Not the president’s cold ownership, but a deep, longing want. She had him.
Vanja bridged the last inch and kissed him. It was not an invitation; it was a takeover. Her lips were soft, then demanding. He froze for a heartbeat—then groaned into her mouth, a sound of surrender and pent-up years. His arms went around her, crushing her to him, his big hands cradling her head as the kiss deepened, messy and wet.
She pulled back, breathing hard. Her hands went to his belt. “I need to forget,” she whispered, her voice rough. “Make me forget him. Please, Rudi.”
He was beyond speech, nodding, his eyes wide and dark. He helped her, fumbling with the buckle, his cock springing free, thick and heavy and already fully hard. She pushed him back against the leather seat, her golden-green eyes holding his as she sank down between his legs in the confined space.
“Vanja, you don’t have to—” he started, a last gasp of propriety.
“I want to,” she said, and took him into her mouth.
She didn’t start gently. She took him deep, her head bobbing, one hand gripping the base of his shaft while the other cupped his balls. She used every technique she knew, every dirty trick learned in other back seats and private boxes, but made it feel not like expertise, but like needy, voracious worship. She slurped and sucked, her tongue tracing the throbbing vein underneath, hollowing her cheeks. The sounds were obscene, wet and greedy, louder than the rain.
“Oh fuck,” Völler choked out, his hands tangling in her hair. He didn’t guide her; he just held on, his hips making tiny, helpless thrusts. “Mein gott, Vanja… your mouth… that perfect fucking mouth…”
She looked up, maintaining eye contact as she took him deeper, until her nose pressed into the coarse blond hair at his base. She saw his entire history with her flash in his eyes: the pride, the protection, the quiet, unacknowledged yearning. It was all being consumed, rewritten in this moment, in the back of his sensible car.
“I’m going to—I can’t—” he warned, his voice strangled.
She doubled her efforts, her hand working in tight tandem with her mouth. She wanted him to lose control completely. She wanted to own this loss of it.
With a ragged shout that was part sob, he came. His back arched off the seat, his grip on her hair tightening to the point of pain as he pumped jet after hot, salty jet into her throat. She swallowed it all, diligently, feeling the pulse of him on her tongue, taking every drop of his climax and his complicated devotion.
And she saw it. Right as the last shudder wracked him, as his eyes rolled back then fluttered open to meet hers, glazed and utterly ruined. She saw the raw, naked need. Not for a protégé. Not for a daughter. For her. The hunger was total.
She had him.
She pulled off slowly, licking her lips, never breaking eye contact. He slumped, spent, a look of dazed wonder and devastation on his face. She sat up, smoothed her dress, and touched his cheek.
“Now I feel better,” she said softly, the ghost of a real smile on her lips. She tasted him on her tongue, metallic and final.
She tasted him on her tongue, metallic and final.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of the rain and Rudi’s shattered breathing. He looked at her, truly looked, and the last vestige of the mentor who’d lectured her on formation discipline dissolved in the steamy car air. What remained was raw, exposed want. She watched the understanding settle in his eyes: there was no going back from this. A line, not just crossed, had been incinerated.
“My house,” he rasped, his voice wrecked. “We can’t… not here.”
She merely nodded, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, a gesture both crude and devastating. He fumbled with his trousers, his big hands clumsy. He started the car, the windshield wipers slapping frantically at the downpour. The drive through the wealthy, tree-lined streets of Zehlendorf was silent, tense, electric. He drove with a fierce concentration, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on her thigh, his thumb making slow, possessive circles on the silk of her dress.
His home was a large, modernist Bauhaus-style structure set back among pines. It was elegant, severe, and utterly lonely. He led her inside, not turning on the main lights. A single lamp in the living room cast long shadows across minimalist furniture and shelves lined with football trophies and memoirs. It smelled of wood polish, old paper, and solitude.
The door had barely closed behind them when he pushed her against it, his body pinning hers. The kiss was a collision, all tongue and teeth and decades of suppressed hunger. He tasted of wine and her. His hands were everywhere, pulling at her dress, grinding his renewed erection against her stomach.
“I’ve thought about this,” he groaned into her neck, biting the tender skin there. “For years. God help me, I have.”
“Show me,” she whispered, her fingers tearing at the buttons of his shirt. “Show me how you thought about it, Rudi.”
He did. He peeled the soaked dress from her body, his calloused striker’s hands reverent and rough on her skin. He stared at her nakedness in the dim light, at the curves he’d praised publicly for their athletic discipline and had secretly ached for in private. He swore, a low, filthy string of German.
He didn’t lead her to a bedroom. He backed her towards the large, leather Chesterfield sofa that dominated the room, a piece for a serious man. He sat, pulling her onto his lap, her knees framing his hips. His cock, thick and veined and hard again, pressed against her slickness. He didn’t enter her yet. He just held her there, his hands gripping her ass, his forehead pressed to her chest, breathing her in.
“Tell me what you want,” she said, her voice a commanding whisper. She rocked against him, letting him feel how wet she was, a wetness begun for the president and stoked now for him.
“I want to ruin us both,” he muttered, his mouth finding her nipple, sucking it deep, his tongue circling the peak. He switched to the other, lavish in his attention. “I want to fuck this brilliant mind right out of you until all you know is my name. I want to be inside you so deep you forget that old bastard’s touch, you forget Klopp’s hands, you forget everything but my cock.”
“Then take it,” she challenged, her own control a thrilling, razor-thin wire. “Stop being my mentor. Stop being a gentleman. Be the man who wanted his protégé so much it hurt. Fuck your little girl, Rudi.”
A sound like a sob ripped from him. He lifted her, positioned the blunt head of his cock at her entrance, and lowered her onto him in one relentless, sinking motion. She cried out, the stretching fullness breathtaking. He was bigger than the president, thicker than Klopp. He filled her completely, a claiming that was physical, emotional, historical.
“Meine göttliche Vanja,” he breathed, his eyes wide, watching her face as she took all of him. “You feel… you feel like a final victory.”
He began to move her on him, his hands on her hips setting a deep, rolling rhythm. The leather sighed beneath them. She braced her hands on his broad shoulders, meeting each upward thrust, taking him deeper. The sound of their joining was obscenely loud in the quiet, cultured room.
“Is this what you imagined?” she panted, riding him harder, feeling the coil of her own orgasm already tightening, amplified by the power of ruining him. “Alone in your big, empty house? Thinking about your star pupil?”
“Yes,” he hissed, his hands sliding up to squeeze her breasts, his thumbs pinching her nipples hard. “Watching you on the training pitch. Those legs. That ass. That sharp, fucking perfect mouth telling men what to do. I wanted to bend you over the战术板 and make you scream. I wanted you to call me something other than ‘Boss’.”
“Like what?” she moaned, the friction becoming unbearable, exquisite. “Tell me.”
He pistoned up into her, his pace becoming frantic, losing its rhythm. “Like daddy,” he grunted, the word torn from him, shameful and hot. “I wanted you to need me. Not the DFB. Not the legend. Me. I wanted you to come on my cock and call me daddy like a filthy, perfect little girl.”
The words, so debasing and true, ignited her. Her climax detonated, a silent, seismic wave that clenched around him, milking his length. She threw her head back, her back arching, a choked scream lodged in her throat.
“Say it,” he demanded, driving into her through the convulsions, his own release building. “Vanja, please. Bitte.”
Through the aftershocks, she looked down at him, at his agonized, ecstatic face. She leaned close, her lips brushing his ear. “Don’t stop, daddy,” she whispered, filthily sweet. “Fill your good girl up.”
He broke. With a roar that seemed to shake the trophies on the shelves, he came, pumping into her, his grip on her hips bruising. He held her locked down on him, shuddering, as he spilled himself in hot, endless pulses.
They stayed like that for a long time, welded together by sweat and spend. The storm outside had eased to a murmur. Slowly, he softened inside her. He didn’t let her go. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her to his chest, his face buried in her hair. He was trembling.
“What have we done?” he whispered, not to her, but to the room, to the ghosts of his career.
Vanja traced the line of his jaw. She felt the victory, cold and complete. She had turned the last honest affection in her life into another weapon, another dependency. She owned this man’s soul now, more utterly than the president owned her contract. The hollowness yawned inside her, but she ignored it. This was the game. This was the only game that mattered.
“We’ve changed the rules,” she said softly. She shifted, feeling his seed leak from her onto his thigh. “Now, are you going to take me to your bed, or are we fucking on every surface of this lonely house tonight?”
He looked up at her. The devastation in his eyes was already being replaced by a desperate, addict’s craving. He’d had a taste. He needed the whole meal.
“Every surface,” he said, his voice grim with certainty. He lifted her, carrying her towards the stairs, his strength undiminished. The night stretched ahead, long and dark and full of broken taboos.