Chapter 8: Franz shoves Vanja's pregnant belly against the cold window, his cock spearing into her from behind as he growls obscenities about her body changing. She claws at the glass while he pounds her swollen breasts against it, watching their reflection as her scream mists the window with each brutal thrust.
The silence after his declaration was a physical thing, thick and claustrophobic. Vanja stared at the ceiling, tracing the intricate plasterwork with her eyes. Build you a new one. The arrogance was breathtaking. The terrifying part was that she believed he could. He had the resources, the influence, the sheer fucking will.
But a new world would still have him at the center. And her, orbiting. With a child.
Her stomach twisted, a cramp of anxiety or early nausea, she couldn’t tell. She extracted herself from his hold, the loss of his heat immediate. She padded naked to the en suite bathroom, closing the door softly. She didn’t turn on the light. She sat on the edge of the deep tub in the grey gloom, her head in her hands.
The test was still in her purse, two miles away in her apartment. Yet she felt those lines glowing inside her, a microscopic barcode that had just rewritten her future. Options. All of them. The clinical thought was a lifeline. A termination was a procedure, clean and final. An adoption, a remote possibility, a ghost life. Keeping it… that was the messy, lifelong war.
When she emerged, he was dressed in dark trousers and a loose linen shirt, standing by the window with a phone to his ear. His voice was low, the cadence pure business. “...push the Zurich meeting to Thursday. No, I don’t care, make it work.” He listened, his gaze fixed on the garden. “And clear my afternoon. Indefinitely.”
He hung up without ceremony and turned to her. He’d brought her dress from the floor, shaken it out, and laid it over a chair. The small act of domesticity was more disorienting than any kiss.
“I have to go home,” she said, her voice sounding hollow.
“I’ll drive you.”
“I need my car. It’s near the office.”
A flicker of impatience crossed his face. “Then I’ll have it brought here. You shouldn’t be driving. You’re pale.”
“I’m not an invalid,” she snapped. “I’m pregnant. There’s a difference.”
The word hung between them, sharp and clinical in the opulent room. He flinched, then nodded once, conceding. “Fine. I’ll drive you to your car. Eat something first.”
He led her downstairs not to the formal dining room, but to the sleek, modern kitchen. It was a room of cold steel and warm wood, clearly designed by a professional but rarely used. He moved with a surprising efficiency, scrambling eggs, toasting dark bread, slicing avocado. He placed the plate before her on the island with a glass of cold water.
She stared at it. The eggs looked like wet yellow cotton. The smell of the butter made her saliva glands ache with warning. She took a small bite to placate him. It tasted of nothing and everything, a confusing mush on her tongue.
“You need to see a doctor,” he said, leaning against the counter opposite her, watching her like a hawk. “Today. I’ll arrange it.”
“I’ll arrange my own appointments, Franz.”
“With whom? Your general practitioner who gossips at the club? This stays contained. I have a doctor. Discreet. Excellent.”
Of course he did. A doctor for discreet miracles and discreet problems. She pushed the plate away. “I’m not hungry.”
“The baby is.”
She looked up at him, fury flashing hot. “Don’t. Don’t use that as a lever. Not yet. It’s a cluster of cells. It’s my cluster of cells. Let me have a minute to fucking process before you start orchestrating its prenatal schedule.”
His jaw tightened. He came around the island, standing close. He didn’t touch her. “Process on the way. We have no time for a philosophical debate. You are carrying the child of Franz Beckenbauer. That is not a personal condition. It is a strategic event.”
She laughed, a dry, cracked sound. “There he is. The strategist. I was wondering when the general would show up to assess the battlefield.”
“This isn’t a war, Vanja. It’s a siege. And the world is outside the walls, waiting to burn us. We secure the perimeter first. Doctor. Security. A plan for your living arrangements.”
“I am not moving in here.”
“You can’t stay in that apartment. It’s not secure. The press, eventually—”
“I said no.” She stood, facing him. “You don’t get to swallow me whole. The baby, maybe. But not me. I need my own space. My own air. Or I will suffocate.”
He studied her, the defiance in her posture, the shadows under her eyes. He saw the fragility beneath the steel. He reached out slowly, brushing a strand of hair from her forehead. His touch was surprisingly gentle. “You look exhausted.”
The sudden softness undid her. The fear, the shock, the relentless pull of him—it welled up behind her eyes in a hot, stupid tide. She tried to blink it back, but a traitorous tear spilled over. Then another.
“Ah, Vanja,” he murmured, and pulled her into his arms.
She didn’t sob. She wept silently, her body shaking, her face pressed into his linen shirt. He held her tightly, one hand cradling the back of her head. He didn’t offer empty platitudes. He just held her as the storm passed, his own breath uneven against her hair.
When her shaking subsided, he tilted her chin up. His own eyes were bright, the blue stormy. “I love you,” he said, the words simple, stark, and utterly devastating.
She cried harder. They were the worst words he could have said. A weapon masquerading as a gift. They changed the calculus of everything. This wasn’t just possession or legacy. It was a confession that bound her in a way no contract ever could. It made her feel terrifyingly, powerfully weak.
She couldn’t say it back. The words were a stone in her throat. She shook her head against his chest, a mute denial of the whole impossible situation.
After a long moment, she sniffed, wiped her face with the heel of her hand, and took a step back, creating distance. Her mind, scrambling for purchase, latched onto the most mundane, physical thing it could.
“I… I want pickles,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “The really sour ones. In a glass jar. The kind that crunch.”
He stared at her. Blinked. A slow, bewildered smile broke across his face, transforming it, making him look younger, utterly disarmed. It was the first completely unguarded expression she’d ever seen from him.
“Pickles,” he repeated, as if she’d requested moon rocks.
“Yes. And the juice. I want to drink the juice.” The craving was sudden, specific, and all-consuming. It felt more real than anything else in the last twenty-four hours.
He started to laugh. It was a rich, full-bodied sound that echoed in the sterile kitchen. He shook his head, still smiling. “I have a 1970 Lafite in the cellar that costs more than your car. And you want pickle juice.”
“Don’t judge me. Your son or daughter wants it.”
The laughter stopped. His expression softened into something awestruck. Your son or daughter. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Alright,” he said, his voice rough. “Pickles.”
He took his phone out, not for business, but to search. He found a specialty deli that opened early. He called, his voice slipping back into its commanding ease. “A large jar of your sourest pickles. The traditional Spreewaldgurken. Yes. And two bottles of the brine. Deliver to this address immediately.” He gave the address and hung up.
He looked back at her. “Ten minutes.”
The mundane absurdity of it broke the tension. A giggle escaped her, hiccupping through her fading tears. “You just had pickles delivered to the Beckenbauer estate.”
“The world is full of mysteries,” he said, reaching for her again. This time, his kiss was gentle, a slow exploration. She let him. His hands slid down her back, over the curve of her ass, pulling her flush against him. She could feel him hardening against her stomach.
“The pickles—” she murmured against his mouth.
“Can wait.”
He lifted her onto the cold, polished granite of the kitchen island. The stone was a shock against her bare thighs. He stepped between her legs, pushing her dress up around her waist. He wasn’t gentle now. The need was back, raw and urgent.
He unzipped his trousers, freeing his erection. He was already fully hard, the head flushed dark. He spat into his palm, slicked himself roughly, and guided his cock to her entrance. She was wet, her body responding to his dominance despite her mind’s turmoil.
“Look at you,” he growled, not pushing in yet. “Sitting on my kitchen counter, crying for pickles, carrying my child. You have unhinged my entire life.”
“Good,” she breathed, and hooked her legs around his hips, pulling him forward.
He drove into her with one deep, searing thrust. She cried out, her nails digging into his shoulders. The position was impossibly intimate, profoundly vulgar. He fucked her there on the counter, his thrusts powerful and deep, the slap of skin on skin loud in the silent, modern kitchen. Each drive nailed her to the cold stone, a sharp contrast to the heat building between them.
“This cunt is mine,” he grunted, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise. “This womb is mine. You can have your own air, Vanja. But this… this is my territory.”
She was close, so quickly, the emotional whiplash and the crude physicality combining into a white-hot coil. “Yes,” she hissed, not sure what she was agreeing to. The ownership. The baby. The terrifying, thrilling permanence of him.
He bent his head, capturing a nipple in his mouth through the thin fabric of her dress, sucking hard. The sharp pleasure-pain tipped her over. She came with a choked scream, her inner muscles clenching around his thrusting cock in rhythmic pulses.
It dragged his own orgasm from him. He shoved deep, burying himself to the hilt, and roared as he came, his whole body rigid. She felt the hot spill inside her, another claim.
He slumped forward, forehead against her shoulder, breathing ragged. They stayed like that, joined, amidst the scent of sex and clean, unused kitchen.
The doorbell rang.
He let out a breathless laugh against her skin. “The pickles.”
She giggled, delirious, spent. He carefully pulled out, tucked himself away, and zipped his trousers. He grabbed a dish towel, ran it under warm water, and handed it to her. His eyes were tender as he watched her clean herself.
“Stay here,” he said.
She heard the front door open, a murmured exchange, the clink of glass. He returned with a paper bag. He pulled out a large glass jar full of fat, green pickles swimming in brine. He unscrewed the lid. The pungent, vinegary smell filled the kitchen.
He fished out a pickle with his fingers and offered it to her. She took it, biting down with a crunch that echoed. The sour, garlicky, dill flavor exploded on her tongue. It was perfect. She moaned in relief.
He watched her, mesmerized. Then he took the jar, lifted it to his lips, and took a long swallow of the brine. He winced, then laughed. “Scheiße, that’s awful.”
“Give it here,” she said, taking the jar from him. She drank deeply, the salty, sour liquid curing a thirst she didn’t know she had.
She sat on the kitchen counter, eating a pickle, drinking brine, her dress bunched around her waist, feeling his semen leak from her. He stood before her, a legendary man in a rumpled shirt, watching her with a look of absolute, bewildered devotion.
She had never felt more powerful, or more utterly ruined.
“The doctor,” she said finally, her voice calm. “Call him. Set it up.”
He nodded, his eyes serious. “Today.”
She took another bite, the crunch deafening in the quiet. The war was not over. It had just changed fronts. And for now, she had pickles. And him. It would have to be enough.
The next two months passed in a surreal haze, a series of starkly lit vignettes held together by the relentless, expanding fact of her body. She ate pickles, whole jars of them, sometimes with chocolate on the side, the bizarre combinations the only thing that settled the roiling in her gut. She cried at everything: a commercial for dog food, a missed call, the way the light hit the Isar river in the afternoon. Franz watched these storms with a sort of fascinated helplessness, learning to just hold her until they passed.
He made love to her with a changed focus, a terrifying tenderness mixed with a possessiveness that had only deepened. One afternoon in the Bogenhausen bedroom, he laid her back amidst the velvet drapes and spent what felt like hours just tasting her, his mouth worshipful between her thighs until she came so hard she saw constellations behind her eyelids. “I can’t get enough of this pussy,” he murmured against her inner thigh, his stubble rough on her sensitive skin. “Knowing my child is right here, beneath my tongue.” Then he’d fuck her slowly, deeply, his eyes locked on hers, as if mapping the changes in her soul.
The doctor Franz provided, a discreet older man with kind eyes, confirmed the pregnancy was robust. The first grainy ultrasound image, a seahorse-shaped ghost, was placed in Franz’s hand. He stared at it in silence for a full five minutes, his thumb stroking the thermal paper, before carefully sliding it into his wallet.
Telling her family was a choreography of anxiety. Her grandfather, a stoic old football man from Dresden, listened silently in his sitting room. He looked from Vanja’s uncertain face to Franz’s respectful, unmovable posture. “Beckenbauer,” he finally grunted, a slow smile cracking his weathered face. “You’ve scored the biggest goal of your life, I see.” Her parents were harder, their initial shock a cold wall of concern. “He’s older than I am, Vanja,” her father said, anguish in his voice. But Franz, disarmingly, didn’t wield his power. He sat in their luxurious living room and spoke plainly of care, of provision, of a respect for their daughter that was fierce and real. Their resistance softened, not to the legend, but to the man who could not hide his devotion.
The news, when they finally released a brief, joint statement to a single trusted outlet, was met with a predictable media quake. The headlines ranged from sensational to vaguely congratulatory. But as the user had noted, he was the god in Germany. The federation murmured its quiet support. Former teammates clapped him on the back. The narrative, expertly guided by his discreet press team, softened into a story of late-life love and legacy. There were no real scandals, only a controlled, respectful buzz.
He proposed not in a crowded restaurant, but in the sterile, quiet ultrasound room at the private clinic. The technician had just left after the twenty-week scan, pointing out fingers, toes, the strong, steady heart. Franz was on his knees beside the examination table, her skin still sticky with gel. He held a simple, devastating emerald ring. “I have spent my life building monuments that feel like sand,” he said, his voice raw. “Build this life with me. Be my wife.” She said yes, crying again, the cold transducer still pressed to her rounding belly.
Now, in her third trimester, the world had acclimatized. The ring was a familiar weight. Her body was a foreign country of curves and kicks. She stood in the dressing room of a boutique in Munich, examining her profile in a full-length mirror. A knit dress draped over the impressive dome of her stomach, hugging the new fullness of her breasts and hips.
“You look great,” said Elodie, her friend from university, perched on a plush stool. “Seriously. Like, only the belly. Your arms, your legs, your face… your body is so strong. And well, nothing changed.” She grinned. “It’s obnoxious.”
Vanja laughed, a full, easy sound now, and bit into a piece of dark chocolate she’d pulled from her purse. “Hope so,” she said, chewing. “I feel like a planet. A very specific, hungry planet.” She turned slightly, placing a hand where a tiny heel was currently prodding her ribs. The relief was superficial, a layer over a deeper, more constant current of awe and terror. She had her own air, an apartment he’d bought but that was in her name only. She had his relentless, focused love, a force as natural and demanding as gravity. And she had this, the relentless, internal push of a future she had chosen, bite by sour, crunchy bite.
And she had this, the relentless, internal push of a future she had chosen, bite by sour, crunchy bite. The heel under her ribcage slid away, a lazy roll replacing it. “Someone’s doing gymnastics in there,” she murmured, her hand splayed over the taut fabric.
“Future midfielder,” Elodie laughed, gathering the rejected dresses. “You’re taking this one, then?”
Vanja nodded, glancing at the price tag without flinching. Franz’s black card, left casually in her wallet like a permission slip, still felt alien. She used it anyway. A small rebellion of acceptance. The late afternoon Munich sun was low and honeyed as they stepped onto the street, her oversized shopping bag brushing against her leg.
“Dinner next week?” Elodie asked, hugging her goodbye. “Before you’re officially a mom and too sleep-deprived for human speech.”
“Text me,” Vanja said, smiling. She watched her friend disappear into the U-Bahn station, the smile fading into a pensive line. The city’s noise felt muffled, everything filtered through the layer of her own body. She drove Franz’s sensible Audi sedan—her sporty coupe deemed impractical—back to Bogenhausen. He was already there, she could tell by the particular way the gravel was disturbed in the drive.
He was in his study, the scent of cigar smoke and old paper clinging to the air. He was on the phone, his back to the door, speaking low in Portuguese about a player’s transfer fee. She paused in the doorway, observing the set of his shoulders, the way his free hand gestured sharply, decisively. This was his realm, the machinations that moved millions and shaped the sport itself.
He felt her presence. He didn’t turn, but his gesture softened. He finished the call with a curt, “Make it happen,” and swiveled in his leather chair. His eyes traveled from her face to the bag in her hand, to the pronounced curve of her belly beneath her coat. A slow, proprietary warmth flooded his gaze.
“Did you buy the place out?” he asked, a ghost of a smile on his lips.
“One dress. And two more jars of pickles. The spicy ones this time.”
“Naturally.” He stood, crossing the room. He didn’t kiss her hello. Instead, he placed both hands on her stomach, his touch firm and knowing. He felt the shift, the hard bulge of a knee or elbow sliding beneath his palm. His breath hitched, just slightly, every single time. This was their ritual. His awe was the most genuine thing she’d ever seen from him.
“He’s strong,” Franz said.
“Or she.”
“He,” he repeated, with a quiet arrogance that made her roll her eyes. He finally looked up at her. “You’re tired.”
“I’m eight months pregnant. I’m perpetually tired.”
“Come upstairs.” It wasn’t a suggestion. His hand left her belly to cradle her elbow, guiding her with an unbearable gentleness that still felt like a command. In the bedroom, he helped her out of her coat, her dress, his fingers deft on the zipper. The cool air raised goosebumps on her skin. He knelt to remove her shoes, his hands cupping her swollen ankles, his thumbs pressing into the faint swell there.
“You shouldn’t,” she muttered, but her head fell back.
“I should.” His thumbs moved in slow circles. He looked up her body, past the mountain of her stomach, to her face. “I need to be inside you.”
The words were blunt, stripped of poetry. A raw, physical need that mirrored her own unpredictable hungers. Her fatigue didn’t extinguish it; it sharpened it, made it a desperate quest for connection. She nodded, a short, sharp dip of her chin.
He undressed quickly, his body still lean and powerful, a network of old scars and defined muscle. He arranged the pillows against the headboard and helped her back onto them, her belly a pale dome in the twilight. He didn’t rush. He kissed the inside of her knee, her thigh, the aching junction of her hip. His mouth was hot and relentless. He pushed her legs apart, his breath humid against her.
“I can’t see you,” she gasped, her hips lifting.
“You can feel me.” His tongue licked a broad, flat stripe through her folds, already slick. He zeroed in on her clit, sucking the swollen nub into his mouth with a focused pressure that made her back arch off the bed. One hand slid under her ass, lifting her, while two thick fingers from his other hand pushed deep inside her, curling. The stretch was exquisite, a perfect counterpoint to the suction of his mouth.
“Franz… fuck…” Her hands fisted in his hair, not pushing him away, holding him to her. He fucked her with his fingers, scissoring them, rubbing that spot inside that made sparks burst behind her eyelids. His tongue never stopped its ruthless rhythm.
“Come in my mouth,” he growled, the vibration against her sensitive flesh tipping her over the edge. The orgasm ripped through her, a deep, internal clenching that made her cry out, her whole body shuddering. He drank from her, his own groan of satisfaction vibrating against her.
Before the last tremor had faded, he was moving up her body. He positioned himself between her thighs, his cock, rigid and leaking, nudging at her soaked entrance. He supported his weight on his arms, his eyes locked on hers. There was a fierce tenderness there, a brutal kind of love.
“Look at me,” he ordered, as he began to push inside.
She was so wet, so open from her climax, but he was thick and the angle was different, profound. He filled her with a slow, inexorable pressure that stole her breath. Her inner walls, still fluttering from her orgasm, tightened around him. He sunk to the hilt, a low, guttural sound escaping him. They were joined impossibly deep, her stomach pressed between them.
“Jesus,” he whispered, staring down at where they were connected. “You feel… divine.” He began to move, a slow, grinding roll of his hips designed to rub his pubic bone against her clit with every inward stroke. It wasn’t frantic. It was deliberate, each thrust a claim, a worship, a possession.
She wrapped her legs around his lower back as best she could. The sensation was overwhelming, a too-full, perfect ache. “Harder,” she breathed, clawing at his shoulders. “Please.”
He obeyed, his pace increasing, the slapping sound of their bodies filling the quiet room. His control shattered. He fucked her with a driven, piston-like rhythm, his face buried in her neck, biting down on the tender skin there. “This is my cunt,” he panted against her ear, filthy and earnest. “My perfect, fucking cunt, growing my son. You take me so deep, Vanja. You swallow me whole.”
His words ignited her again. A second, tighter coiling deep in her core. The pressure built, magnified by the fullness of him, by the raw obscenity of his love-talk. “I’m gonna come,” she warned, her voice breaking.
“Come on my cock,” he snarled. “Soak it. Let me feel it.”
He slammed into her, once, twice, three more times, and she shattered. Her cry was muffled against his shoulder. Her vagina clenched around him in vicious, milking spasms. It tore his own orgasm from him. With a roar that was almost anguished, he drove in one final, brutal time and poured himself into her, his whole body convulsing.
They lay locked together, sweating, breathing in ragged unison. He was still semi-hard inside her, pulsing gently with his fading climax. The room smelled of sex and their shared breath. Slowly, he softened and slipped out. He shifted to lie beside her, one hand returning immediately to rest on her stomach.
A profound stillness settled over them. The baby, perhaps lulled by the rhythm, was quiet. Vanja traced the salt-and-pepper hair on his chest. The silence was comfortable, thick with unspoken things.
Then, a different warmth spread between her legs. Not the slickness of arousal or the seep of his cum. It was a sudden, insistent gush, a pop of internal pressure releasing, soaking the sheets beneath her.
She went very still. Franz felt it too, the hot wetness against his thigh. He propped himself up on an elbow, looking down at her, then at the darkening stain on the linens. His expression shifted from sated confusion to dawning, acute awareness.
“Vanja?” His voice was calm, but a vein pulsed in his temple.
She met his eyes, her own wide. The frantic planning, the doctor’s appointments, the bought apartment, the quieted media—it all fell away, leaving only this visceral, undeniable truth.
“My water just broke,” she said.