Chapter 6: Roman pins Vanja against the sink, tearing her skirt up to her waist as she bites her lip to stay silent. 'Tell him we'll double the signing bonus,' he growls while thrusting deep, the phone wedged between her breasts recording every wet slap of flesh.
The Gulfstream’s engines were a subliminal whisper, a vibration felt in the bones rather than heard. Vanja stared at the contract summary glowing on her tablet, the numbers for Mateo Silva’s personal terms blurring slightly. Across the cabin, Roman was on his satellite phone, his voice a low, relentless murmur in Russian. He’d been circling the agent, Mendes, for two days. The fee with Sevilla was agreed—a nauseating £87 million. Now it was about the parasite’s cut and the kid’s father’s new house.
Roman ended the call and threw the phone onto the cream leather seat beside him. He looked at her, his blue eyes glittering in the cabin’s ambient light. “He’s stalling. Wants another two hundred grand for his ‘administrative team’. He can smell blood. My blood.”
“He smells new money. My money,” Vanja corrected, setting her tablet down. The hum of the jet seemed to intensify.
“He needs to smell desperation to fade,” Roman said, standing. He stretched, the fabric of his black polo shirt pulling across his shoulders. He walked to the bar, poured two fingers of bourbon, didn’t offer her one. “He’s calling back in ten minutes. Final terms.”
“What’s the play?”
Roman turned, leaning against the bar. “The play is we close it. Tonight. Before the Spanish press gets a whiff and starts puffing the kid’s head up even more.” He took a long swallow. “Come here.”
It wasn’t a romantic invitation. It was an instruction. Vanja stood, the soft carpet deep under her bare feet. She’d changed into leggings and a loose cashmere sweater for the flight. He put his glass down, took her face in his hands, and kissed her hard. It tasted of bourbon and impatience. His hands slid down to her hips, pulling her against him. She could feel the hard line of his erection through his trousers.
“He thinks he has leverage,” Roman muttered against her mouth. “We need to remember we have more.”
The satellite phone on the seat began to vibrate, skittering on the leather. Roman broke the kiss but didn’t let go of her. He looked from the phone to her, a dangerous idea crystallizing in his gaze. He reached over, hit the speakerphone button.
“Carlos. Good of you to call back.” Roman’s voice was all polished steel, even as one of his hands slipped under Vanja’s sweater, finding the bare skin of her waist.
“Roman, my friend. I’ve spoken with Mateo’s father. There is great affection for Chelsea, of course, but the project must be right…”
Vanja stiffened. Roman’s hand moved upwards, deftly unhooking the front clasp of her bra. His other hand went to the waistband of her leggings. He looked into her eyes, a challenge blazing in his.
“The project is the only project, Carlos,” Roman said, his voice steady, even conversational. His fingers pushed her leggings and underwear down over her hips in one smooth, silent motion. They pooled at her ankles. The cool cabin air hit her exposed skin. “Champions League football. A manager who will build the system around his creativity. A financial commitment that demonstrates belief.”
He turned her around, pushing her gently until she faced the polished walnut veneer of the nearby bulkhead. In the dark reflection, she saw herself: sweater pushed up, breasts bare, her face flushed. She saw him behind her, his expression focused, cold. He unzipped his trousers.
“The release clause was met. The terms we sent are more than generous,” Roman continued, his voice dropping slightly, taking on a harder edge. At the same time, he spat into his palm, slicked himself, and without ceremony, pressed the thick head of his cock against her entrance.
Mendes’s voice filtered through, tinny and wheedling. “Generosity is appreciated, Roman, but this is a unique talent. The boy needs to feel wanted. A signing bonus, perhaps, separate from the agent fee…”
Roman pushed into her.
Vanja’s head snapped back, a silent gasp strangled in her throat. He filled her in one deep, inexorable thrust. The feeling was shocking, a bolt of pure sensation that rooted her to the spot. She braced her hands against the cool wood.
“He is wanted,” Roman said, his breath hitching almost imperceptibly as he seated himself fully inside her. He began to move, a slow, shallow rhythm designed for cruelty. “I am on a plane right now to finalize this. That is how wanted he is.”
Each withdrawal was a tease, each thrust a punishing reminder. Vanja bit her lip, trying to focus on the reflection, on the absurdity of the agent’s voice discussing loyalty bonuses while she was being fucked from behind. Her breasts swayed with the motion, the peaks hard and sensitive against the rough knit of her sweater. Roman’s hands gripped her hips, his fingers digging in, holding her in place for his use.
“The family is concerned about playing time,” Mendes pressed on, oblivious. “He must be a starter. In the biggest games.”
“He’ll start every game he’s fit for,” Roman grunted, the strain now audible in his voice. His pace increased, becoming harder, deeper. The slap of skin on skin, muted by the jet’s hum, felt deafening to Vanja. “That is my personal assurance.”
He drove into her, his angle perfect, hitting a spot that made stars burst behind her eyelids. A whimper escaped her. She clamped a hand over her mouth.
“Is everything alright, Roman? There is some noise.”
Roman’s eyes found Vanja’s in the reflection. A vicious smile touched his lips. He pulled almost all the way out, then slammed back in, making her body jolt. “A bit of turbulence, Carlos. Nothing we can’t handle. Now, the signing bonus. We can move half a million. But that is the ceiling. And it includes your fee. Take it or leave it. The next call is to his counterpart at Dortmund.”
He was fucking her in earnest now, a brutal, piston-like rhythm that shook her entire body. Her composure was shattering. Pleasure coiled tight in her core, a direct counterpoint to the clinical negotiation. She was a live wire of conflicting sensations: the cool wood under her palms, the heat of him inside her, the drone of the agent’s voice, the roaring in her ears.
“Roman, please, such ultimatums…”
“The ultimatum is the offer,” Roman cut him off, his voice thick. He leaned over her, pressing his chest against her back, his mouth near her ear. His next words were for her, a low, rough whisper she knew the phone would pick up as a muffled threat. “It’s a final, fucking, offer.”
He reached around, his hand sliding between her legs, finding her clit. The direct touch was her undoing. Her orgasm ripped through her, violent and silent, her mouth open in a soundless scream as her internal muscles clenched and spasmed around him. She shook, her knees buckling, held up only by his arm locked around her waist and his relentless, driving hips.
The contractions triggered his own release. With a choked, guttural sound he buried his face in her hair and came, pumping into her in hot, possessive pulses. His body shuddered against hers.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the faint hiss of the satellite connection.
Then, Carlos Mendes’s voice, hesitant, cut the silence. “Alright. Alright, Roman. We have an agreement. Half a million including my fee. The boy is yours.”
Roman, still buried inside her, his weight heavy on her back, let out a long, controlled breath. “Excellent. My lawyers will have the amended papers to you within the hour. Welcome to Chelsea, Carlos.”
He reached a trembling hand and ended the call.
The sudden absence of the voice left only the thrum of the jet and the sound of their breathing. Vanja felt utterly hollowed out, used, and triumphant. He slowly pulled out of her. A hot trickle traced down her inner thigh. She turned, leaning against the bulkhead for support, pulling her sweater down.
Roman zipped his trousers, his face a mask of satiated intensity. He picked up his bourbon glass, drained it. “Silva’s a Blue.”
Vanja, her legs still unsteady, managed a faint, crooked smile. “All it took was a little turbulence.”
He looked at her then, really looked. At her disheveled hair, her swollen lips, the raw, well-fucked look in her green eyes. Something shifted in his expression. The cold strategist faded, replaced by something more unsettled, more real.
“That wasn’t about the deal,” he said, his voice quiet.
“Wasn’t it?”
He stepped closer, cupping her cheek. His thumb brushed her bottom lip. “That was about you. In the medical room, with my money on the table. That was about proving a point. This…” He glanced at the phone. “This was just because I wanted to hear you try to stay quiet while I was inside you.”
The honesty was more disarming than any physical act. She leaned into his touch. “I didn’t try very hard.”
A genuine smile, rare and unstyled, touched his lips. “No. You didn’t.”
He led her back to the wide seat, pulling her down beside him. She curled into his side, her body humming with exhaustion and a strange, deep contentment. The contracts, the billions, the screaming headlines waiting for them on the ground—it all felt distant, secondary.
“When we land,” he said, staring out at the black nothingness of the night sky, “the world goes mad. The Silva leak will happen before the wheels touch the tarmac. They’ll call it insanity. They’ll come for you. For us.”
“Let them,” she murmured, her eyes closing. She felt, rather than saw, his gaze drop to her.
“The first leg against Bayern is in four weeks,” he said. “You have your two pillars. Leduc and Silva. Now build me my fortress.”
As sleep pulled at her, the final, unbidden thought was not of tactics or formations, but of the feel of his hand on her hip, holding her in place, and the sound of a deal closing as she fell apart. It was a new kind of playbook, written in sweat and whispers, and for now, they were the only two people in the world who could read it.
The jet's hum deepened to a grinding whine as it began its descent. London’s arterial glow sprawled beneath the wing, a circuit board of consequences waiting to be activated. Roman stared at it, his hand absently tracing the line of her spine where she lay against him. The silence between them was no longer empty, but charged with the aftermath of what they’d done, the deal they’d sealed in flesh.
“When we land,” he said again, his voice stripped of its earlier triumph, “it begins. The scrutiny will be microscopic. They’ll pick apart the Silva fee, your stake, every fucking thing.”
Vanja didn’t open her eyes. “Let them.”
He shifted, turning her face towards his with a firm grip on her chin. His gaze searched hers, the blue suddenly clear and unsettlingly direct. “Why are you here, working for me? You don’t need to work. Not after what you just put on the table.”
A slow smile spread across her lips, knowing and defiant. She switched to the guttural tongue of his inheritance, the words a deliberate, intimate weapon. “Ya rabotayu ne na tebya.” I’m not working for you. She paused, letting the correction hang. “Ya rabotayu s toboy. Vo slavu rodiny.” I’m working with you. For the glory of the motherland.
The old phrase, loaded with Soviet-era weight and oligarch aspiration, landed between them not as nostalgia, but as a new declaration. It wasn’t about a country. It was about the conquest, the empire they were building from cleat-studded mud and digital transfers. His breath caught, a subtle hitch she felt more than heard.
He kissed her.
This kiss held no negotiation, no performative cruelty. It was deep, acknowledging, a raw concession to their terrifying partnership. His tongue swept into her mouth, claiming the truth she’d just uttered. When he pulled back, his forehead rested against hers. “Rodina,” he whispered, the word a hot ghost on her lips. “Our rodina is a fucking football pitch.”
The fasten seatbelt sign pinged softly. He ignored it. His hands moved to the waist of her discarded leggings, still tangled around her ankles, and pulled them off completely. He shoved his own trousers down just past his hips. His cock, already half-hard again, slapped against her thigh.
“One more time,” he murmured, his voice thick. “Before the world gets its say.”
He lifted her, turning her to straddle him on the wide seat. The leather was cool under her knees. She guided him inside, sinking down onto him with a shuddering sigh. This angle was different, deeper, more consuming. She could see every flicker in his eyes as she began to move, setting a slow, rolling rhythm that made him curse softly.
“You’re a fucking marvel,” he gritted out, his hands gripping her ass, fingers digging into the soft flesh. He helped her, lifting and pulling her down onto him with more force. The seat creaked in protest.
Outside, the city lights rose to meet them. The plane banked. She rode him through the turn, her breasts swaying, her head thrown back. The pleasure built not in a sharp spike but as a vast, rising tide. He bit the curve of her neck, a sharp, claiming sting that pushed her closer.
“Come with me,” he demanded, his thrusts becoming ragged, pushing up into her as she ground down. “Now, Vanja. Let go.”
The orgasm uncoiled from her core, a liquid heat that flooded her veins, wringing a choked cry from her throat. He followed instantly, his own release a hot jet inside her, his body bowing up against hers with a guttural groan that was lost in the landing gear’s final, mechanical whine.
They clutched each other as the wheels screamed onto the tarmac, their sweat-slicked bodies still joined, the deceleration pushing them together. For one perfect, suspended moment, they were a single entity.
Then, stillness. The plane taxied. Her phone, buried in her bag, began to vibrate incessantly. Then his. A chorus of digital panic.
They separated, wordlessly pulling their clothes on, the intimacy shed like a skin. By the time the cabin door opened to the damp London night, they were two separate pillars again: the owner, the manager. The cold air was a shock.
The car stopped at the back entrance. Reporters and cameras swarmed the main gate a hundred yards away, their shouted questions a distorted buzz. Roman made no move to get out.
“The press conference is at ten,” he said. “Greaves will be there. Legal. You’ll be flanked.”
“I don’t need flanking.”
“You do. For the optics. Let them be the shields. You are the weapon.” He finally looked at her, his expression unreadable. “What’s the first thing you say to them?”
Vanja looked out at the seething pack of journalists, a cold clarity settling over her. The aftershocks of pleasure were gone, replaced by a different, more sustainable fire. “I say, ‘Welcome to the new fortress. Try and breach it.’”
A flicker of approval crossed his face. He leaned over, kissed her once, hard and final. “For the glory.”
The door closed on the shouting. The vacuum-sealed silence of the back corridor was immediate, a physical relief. Vanja leaned against the cool concrete wall, the ghost of his kiss still burning on her lips, the phantom ache of him between her legs. Her phone continued to vibrate in her hand. She silenced it, letting the device go dark. For a moment, she just breathed in the sterile smell of disinfectant and ambition.
Footsteps echoed, sharp on the polished floor. Lionel Greaves appeared around the corner, his face a parchment map of anxiety. "They're like piranhas. The lawyers are in the briefing room. We need to—"
"Later," Vanja cut him off, pushing off the wall. Her body felt both electric and leaden. "Is he settled? Leduc?"
"In the medical suite. Full physical. He's… agitated."
"Good." She started walking, her heels clicking a precise tempo. "Agitation is energy. We'll channel it."
Greaves scurried to keep up. "The brief from communications suggests a tone of strategic evolution, not revolution. We feel 'fortress' might be too… militaristic."
Vanja stopped. Turned. She looked at him, letting the silence stretch until he fidgeted. "Lionel. I did not invest a quarter of a billion pounds for a 'strategic evolution.' I bought a revolution." She resumed walking, leaving him behind. "Tell communications to find a spine. Their jobs are part of the revolution too."
The medical suite was quieter, calmer. The new French defender, Leduc, a mountain of a man with a healed gash above his brow, sat on an examination table while a physio measured his range of motion. He watched her enter with the wary, assessing eyes of a predator.
"Édouard," Vanja said, switching to fluent French. "The knee. Tell me the truth the scans won't."
He seemed surprised by the language, the directness. "It is strong. But the memory of pain is… a ghost in the joint. It whispers sometimes when I pivot."
"Ghosts fear noise," she replied, moving closer. "We will flood the joint with such strength, such deliberate movement, that the ghost will be drowned out. You will not just pivot. You will explode. And you will do it between Reece James and my new, very expensive left winger. Understood?"
A slow, fierce grin split his face. "Oui, madame."
Her own phone buzzed again. A single message from Roman. Press conference moved to 7 a.m. They’re camping at the gates. My driver will collect you at 6.
She typed back one word. Understood.
The next hours blurred into a tactical siege. Meetings with lawyers who spoke in paragraphs of liability. Sessions with communications directors who suggested platitudes. She shredded their careful scripts. "We are not apologizing for ambition," she stated, her voice flat. "We are stating a fact. The game has changed. We are the change."
At 5:45 a.m., the black sedan slid into the empty staff lot. She slid inside. Roman was there, already in a suit that looked like it had been forged from shadows. He held a porcelain cup of espresso out to her. She took it, the heat seeping into her cold fingers.
"You look like hell," he said, his voice quiet.
"I feel like a theorem that's been proven through violent contradiction," she replied, sipping the bitter, perfect coffee.
He almost smiled. "The press will try to unbalance you. To make it about your gender, your looks, your money. Your… relationship with me."
"Let them."
"They will ask about the nature of our partnership."
She turned to look at him, the dawn light bleeding grey into the sky behind his head. "And what is the nature of our partnership, Roman?"
He held her gaze for a long moment. The car moved through dormant streets. "It is a mutually assured destruction pact wrapped in a privilege. And right now, it is the only thing that matters."
The press room was a white-hot cavern of lights and shouted questions. She took her seat at the long table, Greaves to her left, the club's lead counsel to her right. Roman stood at the back, a specter in the shadows. She leaned into the microphone.
"For those questioning the scale of our ambition, you are welcome to your doubts," she began, her voice clear and carrying without a raised tone. "But understand this: doubt is not a strategy. It is a luxury. We have forgone luxuries. The acquisitions of Leduc and Silva are foundational pieces, not ornaments. They were pursued with strategic clarity and financial commitment that reflects their value to this project. My personal investment is a signal of conviction, not a topic for gossip. The next question relevant to football, please."
The silence was stunned. Then the room erupted.
It lasted forty-seven minutes. She dissected their outrage with clinical precision, pivoting every personal barb into a discussion of positional play, financial fair play regulations, and tactical philosophy. She quoted studies on neuroplasticity in athlete development. She dissected Bayern Munich’s high defensive line in flawless German for a reporter from Berlin. When a sneering tabloid man asked if her PhD was in "blowjobs or sociology," a cold fury swept the room.
Roman took a single step forward from the shadows.
Before he could speak, Vanja leaned forward. "My doctorate is in the mobilization of human potential under systemic pressure," she said, her voice dropping to a venomous purr the microphone caught perfectly. "Which, judging by your question, is a field you have spectacularly failed to comprehend. Next question."
She walked out of the room on a deafening silence, followed by the clicking fury of a hundred camera shutters.
The rest of the day was a descent into the granular. Training plans, integration schedules for the new signings, a fraught meeting with the captain about "changing room chemistry." She ate a protein bar at her desk while reviewing footage of Bayern’s last three matches. The purple bruise on her ribs had faded to a sickly yellow, a forgotten monument.
At 9 p.m., the door to her office opened. Roman stood there. The building was silent, hollowed out.
"We are going to dinner," he said.
She didn't look up from the footage. "No. We can't. I have to—"
"Vanja." He walked in, placed his hands on her desk, leaning over it. "You haven't eaten today. And there is this great Italian place. A private room. No one will see us."
She looked up then, saw the genuine, weary concern etched beside the usual impatience in his eyes. The heroics of the press conference were gone. Here was just a man looking at a woman who was pushing herself to the edge of fracture. The simple observation—that he had noticed she hadn't eaten—felt more intimate than anything that had happened on the plane.
Vanja nodded. "Okay."
The restaurant was a warm, dim cave of red leather and the smell of garlic and wood-fired bread. The private room was upstairs, small, with a single candle flickering between them. A bottle of Barolo appeared, was poured. They didn't talk about Silva, or Leduc, or the press. He told her a story about his grandfather and a frozen lake in Siberia. She spoke about her first football memory, her father’s voice explaining the geometry of a perfect pass.
It was disorienting. The tension that usually crackled between them softened into something else, a tentative recognition of the people beneath the projections. They shared a tiramisu, his spoon stealing a bite of hers. When the espresso arrived, hard and dark, the outside world began to bleed back in.
His phone buzzed. He glanced at it, his face tightening. "Silva's flight was delayed. He'll arrive at noon tomorrow. The unveiling is chaos."
She nodded, the professional mask settling back into place, but it felt different now. Thinner.
The drive back to the flat wasn't charged with the usual predatory silence. It was quiet, thoughtful. He held her hand, his thumb tracing circles on her palm. Inside, he didn't immediately reach for her. He poured two glasses of water, handed her one.
"Your performance today," he said, leaning against the kitchen island. "It was...formidable."
"‘Formidable’ is the minimum requirement," she replied, but there was no bite to it.
He set his glass down. Closed the distance. This time, his kiss was slow. Exploratory. It tasted of red wine and regret and something dangerously close to tenderness. His hands came up to frame her face, his touch reverent. It terrified her more than his violence ever had.
He walked her backwards to the bedroom, undressing her not with frantic haste, but with a deliberate, almost curious slowness. He kissed the fading bruise on her ribs. He worshiped her breasts with his mouth until she was trembling. When she was naked, he laid her back on the bed and just looked, his blue eyes dark in the lamplight.
"You are the most terrifying investment I have ever made," he whispered, his voice rough.
Then his mouth was between her legs, and this was different too. This was not a means to an end, not a punishment or a power play. It was dedication. His tongue worked her with a focused, unhurried intensity that built the pleasure in deep, gathering waves. He licked into her, sucking her clit into his mouth, his hands holding her hips down as she arched off the bed.
"Roman… God… please…" The please was new. A surrender of a different kind.
He didn't stop. He drove her to the edge with his mouth alone, then pulled back, letting her hover there, trembling. Then he crawled up her body, his cock, heavy and hard, sliding through her slickness. He positioned himself at her entrance, his eyes locked on hers.
"Tell me you want it," he murmured, the animal need still there, gleaming beneath the strange new care.
"I want it. I want you." The admission felt like jumping from a cliff.
He pushed in. A long, slow, devastating invasion that filled her completely. He set a deep, rhythmic pace, each stroke a brutal tenderness. He fucked her with a consuming focus that made her feel both shattered and entirely seen. She came with a sobbing cry, the orgasm tearing through her with a depth that felt spiritual. He followed, his own release a shuddering surrender, his face buried in her neck, a broken word that might have been her name on his lips.
Afterward, tangled in the sheets and each other, the reality of the morning looming, she traced the line of his jaw.