Chapter 14: Performance Review
The defeat was a rotten, lingering smell in the corridors of London Colney. A 2-1 loss to a mid-table side they should have dismantled. The second goal was a direct result of a lazy, petulant back-pass from Leo Carter, intercepted and punished with cruel efficiency. His subsequent red card for a studs-up, revenge tackle in the 85th minute was the final, stupid flourish.
Vanja watched it all from the directors’ box, her face a mask of still water over a boiling sea. She didn’t go to the dressing room. Let Mikel handle the immediate fallout, the shouted recriminations. Her work would be colder, more surgical.
She waited until nearly midnight, long after the last staff car had left. The training ground was a ghost town, lit by the eerie blue glow of security lights on the empty pitches. Her heels clicked a precise, ominous rhythm on the polished concrete floors leading to the analytics suite.
He was there, as she knew he would be. Leo Carter, still in his training kit, hood up, slouched in a chair before the bank of screens. He was staring at the frozen replay of his tackle, the one that had earned him the early shower and a three-match ban. The room hummed with the cool breath of servers, the only light coming from the data flashing across the monitors: his pass completion rate (62%), his defensive actions (1), his xG delta (-0.8). A catalog of failure.
“Couldn’t stay away from the scene of the crime?” Vanja’s voice cut through the hum.
He jerked, spinning the chair. His face was a storm of bruised ego and defiance. “Come to gloat, Director?”
“I don’t gloat. I assess. And what I’m assessing is a rapidly depreciating asset.” She walked in, letting the door sigh shut behind her. She placed her tablet on the central console with a quiet, final tap. “That performance wasn’t just bad. It was a betrayal. Of the shirt, of your teammates, and of the talent you’re pissing away.”
He surged to his feet, looming over her. “You don’t know what it’s like out there. The pressure. You sit up in your glass box in your tight dresses and judge.”
“I know the numbers, Leo. And the numbers scream that you’re scared. You get into the final third and your brain melts. You’d rather make a dirty tackle than track back and face the fact you’re defensively illiterate.” She didn’t step back. She looked up at him, her golden-green eyes reflecting the screen’s cold light. “You’re a child with a Ferrari, and you’re about to wrap it around a tree.”
“Fuck you,” he spat, but the heat was leaching from his voice, replaced by a shaky rage.
“That’s the issue, isn’t it?” Vanja said, her tone dropping to a conversational, deadly calm. “You’ve wanted to since the day I walked in. That’s your solution to everything you can’t understand or control. Seduce it or break it.”
She took a single step forward, closing the last inch of space. She could smell the stale sweat on him, the adrenaline still sour on his skin. “You think fucking me would prove something? That it would make you the man in this room?”
His breath hitched. His eyes dropped to her lips.
Vanja’s hand shot out, not to his face, but to his chest. She shoved him, hard. He was off-balance, emotionally unraveled, and he fell back into the padded chair with a grunt. Before he could move, she was on him, straddling his lap, her knees pinning his thighs to the chair. She fisted a hand in the fabric of his hoodie, yanking his face up to hers.
“This isn’t a seduction,” she whispered, her voice a blade of pure intent. “This is a audit. And you are failing.”
She crushed her mouth to his. It wasn’t a kiss; it was a takeover. Her tongue forced its way past his lips, a dominant, violating thrust. He made a sound, a muffled groan of shock and instant, helpless arousal. His hands came up to her waist, big and clumsy.
She broke the kiss, breathing hard. “Don’t you dare touch me unless I tell you to.” Her words were ice. He froze, his hands hovering.
With efficient, ruthless motions, she undid the drawstring of his training pants, yanked them down over his hips. He was already half-hard. She wrapped her fingers around him, feeling him jump to full, throbbing erection under her punishing grip. “Pathetic,” she murmured, watching his face flush. “So easy to turn on. No discipline at all.”
On the screen above his shoulder, his miserable heat map flickered, a sad, static cluster in the wrong half of the pitch.
Vanja hooked her thumbs into the sides of her own underwear beneath her skirt, wrenching the delicate fabric aside until it tore. She didn’t remove them. She positioned herself over him, the head of his cock pressing against her. She was wet, tense with fury.
“Look,” she commanded, pointing at the main screen which now displayed his xG chart, a flatline of missed opportunities. “Look at what you are.”
She sank down onto him, forcing him inside her in one excruciating, unyielding descent. A sharp gasp was torn from both of them—his from overwhelmed sensation, hers from the brutal, burning stretch. There was no tenderness, no preparation. It was a punishing fit, a raw claiming of territory.
“Oh, God,” he choked out, his head slamming back against the headrest.
“No,” she panted, beginning to move, a hard, grinding rise and fall that was more about friction than pleasure. “Just me. Your Director. The one who owns your contract. The one who can bury you in the reserves until you rot.” She leaned forward, her breath hot against his ear. “This pussy is the closest you’ll ever get to real power again. Remember that.”
She rode him like she was trying to destroy them both. The chair squeaked a frantic, rhythmic protest against the floor. His hands, forbidden from touching her, gripped the armrests until his knuckles were white. His eyes were wide, locked on her face, then on the screens flashing around them—his sprint speed, his distance covered, all of it inferior. His public humiliation was literally the backdrop to his private one.
The pain for her subsided, burned away by a furious, dark heat. The feel of him, so deep, so utterly controlled, sparked something primal and terrible. Her movements became less grinding, more fluid, seeking a vicious angle. She found it. A sharp cry escaped her, unbidden.
Seeing her pleasure broke something in him. “Vanja,” he begged, his composure shattering. “Please. Let me… I need to…”
“You need to come?” she sneered, driving down harder, feeling him swell inside her. “Do it. Come for your Director. Show me how little control you have.”
It was permission and condemnation in one. His body arched, a strangled shout echoing in the sterile room as he emptied himself into her in hot, pulsing jets. She felt every spasm, milking him with the tight, rhythmic clench of her own body, not letting him soften, not letting him escape.
She didn’t stop moving. She rode him through the hypersensitivity, his whimpered protests a fuel to her fire. His cock, still partly hard from sheer youth and shock, remained trapped inside her. Her own climax was building, a coil of anger and dominance about to snap.
“Again,” she demanded, her voice guttural. She reached between them, her fingers rough on her own clit. “You don’t get to be done until I am.”
It was obscene. The overstimulation, the psychological surrender, the cold data flickering around them. His body, traitorously responsive, began to harden fully once more beneath her relentless rhythm. His second orgasm was quieter, a deep, shuddering release that seemed to drain the color from his face. He went limp, eyes glazed.
Vanja’s own finish hit her like a silent lightning strike. It was sharp and profound, a wave of dark power that clenched around him, drawing a weak, third, almost dry pulse from his spent body. She slumped forward for a moment, her forehead against his shoulder, breathing in the scent of salt and failure.
Then she pushed herself off him, standing on shaky legs. She smoothed her skirt down. He sat there, exposed, pants around his ankles, semen glistening on his stomach and hers, utterly broken.
She plucked a box of tissues from the console, cleaned herself with detached efficiency, then tossed the box into his lap. “Clean up. Your suspension starts tomorrow. You’ll report here, to this room, every day at 7 a.m. You’ll watch every minute of your pathetic performance until you can recite your mistakes in your sleep. Then you’ll train alone.”
He didn’t speak. He just stared, hollow-eyed.
As she reached the door, she paused, not looking back. “And Leo? If you ever speak a word of this to anyone, I will not only end your career, I will make sure you never kick a ball for pay again. Anywhere. The data,” she finally glanced at the screens, “always backs me up.”
She walked out, leaving him in the cold glow of his own inadequacy. The hallway seemed darker, quieter. In the elevator, she leaned against the wall. Her body throbbed, a used, aching vessel. There was no triumph. Only a cold, metallic taste in her mouth, the taste of power exercised in its most corrupt form.
Just don’t enjoy it too much. Mats’s words echoed, a phantom judgment.
She had. For a moment, in the heart of that furious rhythm, she had. And that truth was more frightening than any boardroom battle. She had used sex as a weapon, and the recoil had bruised her own soul.
Her phone vibrated. A notification. Joshua Kimmich had liked an old photo of hers on Instagram, a throwback from her coaching days in Munich. A harmless, meaningless digital nudge. In the dark of the descending elevator, it felt like a lifeline thrown from a world where the lines weren’t so blurred, where pleasure wasn’t poison. She stared at the screen until the doors opened onto the empty parking garage, the echo of her own footsteps the only reply.
The black asphalt of the garage gleamed under sterile lights, swallowing the sound of her heels. She got into her car, the door thudding shut with a finality that sealed the night inside with her. The scent of herself, of sex and exertion, filled the insulated space, a shameful perfume.
She tapped Joshua’s name. The phone rang once in Munich before he answered, his voice textured with sleep and immediate concern. “Vanja? It’s late. Is everything okay?”
“No.” The word was small, a crack in the granite facade. She heard sheets rustle, him sitting up. “Tell me something normal. Tell me about your day. The training, the weather. Anything.”
He paused, sensing the fracture. “Okay. Uh, it rained this morning. The ball skidded on the grass at Säbener Straße. Gnabry fell on his ass during a passing drill. We all laughed.” He spoke softly, painting the mundane picture she desperately needed. “Müller told a terrible joke at lunch. I still don’t get it.”
A shaky breath escaped her. She leaned her head against the cool window, watching her faint reflection. “I did something terrible, Josh.”
“Do you need a lawyer or a friend?” No judgment, just a quiet offering.
“A friend. God, just a friend.” She closed her eyes. “I can still feel him. Inside me. And I wanted to… break him. I think I did.”
“Where are you?”
“At Colney. In my car.”
“Stay there. Just stay on the phone.” She heard more movement, a door opening and closing. “I’m on the balcony. The air is cold. It smells like wet pine.”
She listened, syncing her breathing with his descriptions, letting the clean distance of Munich wash over the grime of London. The rigid coil in her chest began, infinitesimally, to loosen.
“I miss you,” she whispered, the admission startling her with its truth.
“I miss you, too. More than is smart for either of us.” A beat of silence, filled only by the faint whisper of wind on his end. “What do you need, Vanja?”
“I need to forget my own name for a while.”
She heard the shift in his breath. “Take your phone. Go home. Get in your bed. Call me when you’re there.”
The drive was a blur of streetlights and hollow silence. Her apartment was dark, a sleek, empty monument to her success. She didn’t turn on the lights. She stripped, letting the ruined clothes fall to the floor, and slid between cold sheets.
The phone screen glowed in the dark when she called him back. His face appeared, pixelated and beautiful, shadowed in the low light from his own room.
“I’m here,” she said.
“Show me.” His voice was a low command, but of a different kind. It was an invitation to surrender, not a prelude to destruction.
She moved the camera down the length of her body, pale in the blue light. She let it linger on the curve of her breast, the dip of her waist, the dark blond thatch between her legs, still tender from earlier.
“Touch yourself.” The words were soft, but undeniable. “Where I would if I were there. Show me how you like it now, for you. Not for power.”
Her fingers trailed down her stomach. This felt different, a reclamation. She parted her folds, finding the slickness that was purely her own, untouched by the violence of before. A soft gasp left her lips as she circled her clit, the sensation a sharp, clean pleasure.
“Tell me,” he murmured, his eyes on the screen, watching her hand move.
“It’s… so much. After everything, it’s so much.” Her hips lifted off the bed, seeking the pressure of her own touch. “I’m thinking of your mouth. That first time in your car after the Champions League match. You tasted me for what felt like hours.”
“I remember. You came so hard you screamed into your own arm.” His voice was thick. She heard the rustle of fabric, knew he was touching himself too. “Are you close?”
“Not yet. I need more.” Her movements became more urgent, two fingers sliding inside herself, fucking into the wet heat with a frantic rhythm. “I need to hear you. Tell me what you’d do.”
“I’d pin you to that bed. I’d spread those perfect legs and eat your cunt until you couldn’t speak. I’d make you come on my tongue until you were so sensitive you’d beg me to stop, and then I’d fuck you with my fingers while I sucked your clit, and you’d come again, screaming.” His words were a rough, vivid stream, painting the scene she craved. “Then I’d flip you over. I’d push your face into the pillow and drive my cock into you from behind. I’d fuck you so deep, Vanja. I’d own that sweet, tight pussy. You’d feel me for days.”
“Yes,” she hissed, her body coiling tight, a live wire. “Josh, I’m gonna…”
“Come. Come for me. Now.”
The orgasm shattered through her, a clean, blinding detonation that wiped every other thought from her mind. Her back arched, a silent cry on her lips as her muscles clenched around her fingers in violent, pulsing waves. It went on and on, a tidal release that left her trembling, boneless.
She heard his own ragged groan through the phone, a strained, “Fuck…,” as he found his own release.
For a long time, there was only the sound of their slowing breath syncing across the distance. The ghosts in the room had receded.
“Better?” he asked, his voice warm with exhaustion and affection.
“The world is back in its proper orbit.” She pulled the sheet over her, the fabric soft on her oversensitive skin. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.” A comfortable silence settled. “This thing with the player… it’s done?”
“It’s done.” She believed it, she hoped.
“Good. Get some sleep, genius. You’ve got a club to run tomorrow.”
She smiled, a real one, feeling the weariness in her bones. “Goodnight, Joshua.”
The call ended. The dark room was no longer hostile. It was simply a room. She curled onto her side, the memory of his voice a tangible warmth against her skin, a anchor in the turbulent dark. Sleep came, not as an escape, but as a deserved respite.
Sleep came, not as an escape, but as a deserved respite. It was a blank, dreamless void that lasted precisely five hours and twenty-three minutes before her alarm carved through it with surgical precision. The morning was a series of calculated motions: a scalding shower that reddened her skin, a stark black trouser suit, coffee so bitter it made her jaw clench. The night before existed now as data points in her nervous system—a lingering soreness, a hollow echo of Joshua’s voice, the metallic aftertaste of her own corruption. She filed it all under ‘Lesson Learned’ and locked the drawer.
Leo, to his credit, was already in the analytics suite at 6:58 a.m. He didn’t meet her eyes when she entered. For a week, he was a ghost at the training ground, a sullen but compliant specter. He consumed his own failure on loop, his jaw tight as he annotated every lazy pass, every missed defensive rotation. His solo training sessions were vicious, a pent-up energy directed at the grass and the ball. He ran until he vomited, then ran more. Vanja observed from her office window, her coffee cooling untouched. The discipline was a good sign, a channeling of the shame. She knew it wouldn’t last.
The fracture came on a Tuesday, three days before the squad was due to fly to a difficult away match. Vanja intercepted him leaving the gym, his hair damp with sweat, headphones on. She stepped into his path, forcing him to stop. “Your positional analysis from yesterday’s video session. I need your written notes by five.”
He slowly pulled one headphone down, his eyes fixed on a point over her shoulder. “Yeah.”
“I said I need them, Leo. Not a wish. A requirement for team selection.” Her tone was flat, administrative.
This time, he didn’t even bother with the single syllable. He just stared through her, his expression bored, and tapped his phone screen to life, scrolling through a feed of fast cars. He shouldered past her, the faint smell of his sweat and disdain hanging in the air between them. The message was clear: the transaction in the data room was over. He was reclaiming his arrogance, thin as it now was.
Vanja let him go. A public scene was a tool, not a reflex. She stored the disrespect, another data point.
The victory against a top-four rival away from home was a gritty, monumental affair. They won 1-0, a scrappy set-piece goal from Rice. It was the kind of win that forged belief, and the mood on the flight back to London was a palpable, roaring relief. Mikel, pragmatic as ever, forbade a proper night out but sanctioned a subdued celebration at a members-only club in Mayfair. “Two drinks. Home. We have a match Saturday.”
The club was a cavern of dark wood and low, golden light. The bass from the music thrummed through the soles of Vanja’s heels. She moved through the crowd not as one of them, but as their architect, accepting backslaps and nods with a practiced, faint smile. She ordered a mineral water, her eyes making a slow, professional sweep of the room.
She saw Leo before he saw her. He was stationed near a plush booth, a fresh drink in his hand, his body language performing a confidence his eyes lacked. Two women flanked him. One was blonde, willowy, all sharp angles and practiced pouts. The other had dark, straightened hair, inflated lips that glistened under the lights, and a body that fought against the tight sequins of her dress. They were talking over each other, leaning in, their laughter a little too loud.
Leo’s gaze drifted across the room and found Vanja. He held it. A challenge. He then looked deliberately at the blonde, said something that made her touch his arm, then turned and whispered something to the dark-haired girl, who giggled and swatted his chest. It was a pantomime of desirability, staged for a single viewer.
Vanja felt nothing. No spike of heat, no twist of jealousy. Just a profound, almost anthropological curiosity at the clumsiness of the display. She turned her back on the entire performance.
Declan Rice was at the bar, frowning at his phone. Vanja slid onto the stool beside him. “Trouble?”
He looked up, his face breaking into an easy grin. “No, just… wedding anniversary next week. I’m useless at this. Jewelry? A trip? She says she doesn’t want anything, but that’s a trap, right?”
“Always a trap,” Vanja said, her voice warming. “Lauren likes experiences, doesn’t she? The thing you can’t wrap.”
“Yeah. Yeah, she does.” He scratched his head. “Maybe a weekend at that spa in Cornwall? The one with the cliff-top hot pools.”
“Now you’re thinking. Book the suite, not the room. And have flowers waiting, not sent. The difference is everything.” She took a sip of her water, aware of Leo’s stare burning into her profile. She leaned in slightly, making her conversation with Rice appear more intimate. “How is she? Lauren.”
“She’s great. Actually, she’s here. Just parking.” As if summoned, a side door opened, and Lauren Rice walked in, her face lighting up as she spotted her husband. She was effortlessly stylish, radiating a calm warmth that cut through the room’s pretension.
Vanja stood, greeting her with a genuine smile and a kiss on the cheek. They fell into easy conversation about the spa idea, about the match, about a new restaurant. It was normal, pleasant, human. Out of the corner of her eye, Vanja saw Leo’s performance intensify. He had an arm around the blonde now, but his attention was fractured, his eyes constantly flicking to their little group. The dark-haired girl was talking, but he wasn’t listening.
Lauren, perceptive, followed Vanja’s micro-glance. Her eyes softened with understanding. “He’s a child,” she murmured, not unkindly, as Declan went to fetch her a drink.
“A very talented, very expensive child,” Vanja corrected, her voice low. “He thinks he’s staging a rebellion. It’s just poor theater.”
“Does it bother you?”
Vanja considered the question, watching as Leo finally disentangled himself and walked, with exaggerated swagger, towards the men’s room, purposely taking a route that passed within feet of them. He didn’t look at her. He exhaled a cloud of expensive cologne and immature resentment.
“No,” Vanja said, the answer solidifying as she said it. “It bores me.” She turned fully to Lauren, shutting Leo out of her physical and mental space. “Now, tell me about this spa. I’ve heard the treatments are brutal.”
As she laughed at Lauren’s description of a seaweed wrap, Vanja felt the last psychic hook Leo had in her snap. His jealousy was his to drown in. Her power was no longer in confronting his chaos, but in having a world—a real, solid, pleasant world—that existed entirely beyond it. The analytics room was closed. This, the quiet confidence of a connected life, was her new territory. And she had just taken the first, firm step onto its soil.