Chapter 9: Champagne and Regret
The bass from the club’s main floor was a physical tremor in the VIP lounge’s plush carpet. Vanja sipped champagne, the bubbles sharp and pointless on her tongue. Bayern had crushed Union Berlin 4-0. Michael had scored a brace. The atmosphere was a frothing mix of adrenaline and expensive alcohol. He was across the room, surrounded by a rotating orbit of teammates, sponsors, and hollow-eyed beautiful people. His arm was slung around Thomas Müller’s shoulders, laughing at something, but his eyes kept finding hers. They were dark, possessive glints in the strobing lights. A promise. A threat. Same thing now.
She needed air that didn’t smell of cigar smoke and ambition. She excused herself from a conversation with a board member’s wife and moved towards the curated darkness of the hallway leading to the bathrooms. The relative quiet was a relief.
The relief died instantly.
Joshua Kimmich leaned against the gilded wallpaper, a crystal tumbler of amber liquor dangling from his fingers. He wasn’t part of the celebratory throng; he’d been subbed off at half with a tight hamstring, a fact that had left him simmering all evening. His gaze tracked her, calculating and unsmiling.
“Vanja,” he said, his voice cutting through the muffled thump of music. “Congratulations.”
“On what?” She didn’t stop walking.
“On your… acquisition.” He pushed off the wall, falling into step beside her, blocking access to the ladies’ room door. “The most expensive transfer of the window. And he didn’t even have to pay a fee.”
She stopped, turning to face him fully. “Move, Joshua.”
He didn’t. He took a sip of his drink, his eyes scanning her face with a familiarity that felt like a violation. “It’s funny. I look at you now, standing here in his shirt, smelling like his cologne, and I can still taste that Jägermeister from three years ago. At the Hoffenheim team party. You remember. You were visiting Pavlo.”
A cold knot formed in her stomach. She remembered. The sticky floor, the pounding music, Joshua—younger, less hardened, but with the same intense focus—cornering her near the fire exit. His hand on her waist, his breath sour with liquor, leaning in. She’d turned her head at the last second. His lips had brushed her cheek. She’d shoved him back, hard. “You were drunk,” she said, her voice flat.
“I was,” he agreed, nodding slowly. “But not so drunk I forgot how you looked at me before you turned away. Not so drunk I forgot the sound you made. A little gasp. Like you wanted it.”
“I didn’t.”
“You could have. And now you’re with him.” He said it like a curse. “The golden boy. The project. Does he know how close you and I came?”
“There was no ‘close,’ Joshua. You missed. I left.”
“You still taste like regret,” he hissed, the alcohol fueling a sudden, ugly spite. “The one I let get away because I was too fucking polite.”
He grabbed her wrist. His grip was strong, a footballer’s grip, pinning her in place. He pulled her close, their angry breaths mingling. The scent of his expensive whisky was cloying. “He thinks he owns you. He doesn’t. He just got there first.”
“Let. Go.”
A dry, familiar voice cut through the tension. “I’d listen to her, Josh. Unless you want that hamstring to be the least of your worries.”
Aleksandar Pavlovic stood a few feet away, holding two bottles of water. His face was a mask of casual observation, but his eyes were cold flints. He looked from Joshua’s hand on Vanja’s wrist to her furious face.
Joshua didn’t release her. He smirked at Pavlo. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“She’s my best friend. He’s my teammate. It mathematically concerns me.” Pavlo took a step closer. His voice dropped, conversational, lethal. “And Mike is about five champagne flutes deep into celebrating his win, thinking about the fucking he’s gonna give her later. You really want to be the reason his mood turns? He’ll rip your spine out through your asshole, Kimmich. And I’ll hold your legs.”
The graphic violence in Pavlo’s calm tone broke the spell. Joshua’s grip loosened for a split second. It was all Vanja needed.
She wrenched her arm free and brought her other hand around in a sharp, cracking arc. The slap echoed in the hallway, a sound more shocking than the music. Joshua’s head snapped to the side, a red bloom immediately appearing on his cheek.
“We never mention that night again,” Vanja said, her voice trembling not with fear but with pure, incandescent rage. “You go back to your girlfriend, you finish your drink, and you forget my face. If you ever touch me again, I won’t need Michael or Aleks. I will take a fucking steak knife from the buffet and carve your name into your chest. Do you understand me?”
Joshua touched his cheek, stunned. The raw hatred in her eyes was more effective than any physical threat from the men.
Pavlo whistled low. “Told you.”
Joshua recovered, his pride wounded and festering. He straightened his jacket, giving Vanja one last, searing look. “This isn’t over.”
“It was over three years ago,” she spat.
He walked away, disappearing into the swirling crowd.
Vanja’s breath came in sharp gasps. Pavlo handed her a water bottle. She took it, her hands shaking.
“You okay?” he asked, all sarcasm gone.
“I need to leave.”
“Mike—”
“I don’t care. I need to be out of this fucking zoo. Now.”
Pavlo nodded. “Side exit. I’ll cover. Go.”
She didn’t look back. She pushed through a service door and emerged into the cool, silent alley behind the club. The bass was a dull thud in the walls. She leaned against the rough brick, sucking in the night air, trying to erase the feel of Joshua’s fingers on her skin, the ghost of his sour breath.
She didn’t hear him approach. She felt him.
A large, warm hand settled on the small of her back. She knew his touch instantly. The rage in her morphed, twisting into something else, something desperate and dark.
Michael turned her to face him. He was silhouetted against the club’s neon spill, his face in shadow. He didn’t ask what happened. Pavlo had clearly given him the essentials. His silence was more terrifying than any question.
“He touched you,” Michael said. It wasn’t a question. His voice was a low, calm monotone. The dead calm before the detonation.
“Yes.”
“Where.”
“My wrist. He grabbed me.”
Michael took her wrist gently, his thumb stroking the skin where Joshua’s fingers had been. The tenderness of the gesture was at odds with the violence vibrating off him. He lifted her wrist to his mouth and pressed his lips to the spot, a kiss that felt like an erasure. Then his tongue flicked out, tracing the imagined imprint.
“I can still smell him on you,” he murmured, his breath hot against her skin. “His fucking cologne. His jealousy.”
He backed her up until the brick wall was cold against her shoulder blades. The alley was dark, private, a canyon of dumpsters and shadows. The world narrowed to his body, his eyes, the animal hunger radiating from him.
“He talked about tasting you.” Michael’s hand came up to cup her jaw, his thumb brushing her lower lip. “Did he taste you, Vanja?”
“No. He missed.”
A feral, satisfied sound rumbled in his chest. “Good. Because this mouth is mine.” He claimed it in a searing, brutal kiss. It was all teeth and desperate tongue, a reclaiming of territory. He tasted of champagne and dark, unchecked fury. His hands slid down her body, gripping the hem of the silky shirt she wore—his shirt from that morning—and yanking it up. The cool air pebbled her skin.
He didn’t bother with her jeans. He unbuttoned them, wrenched the zipper down, and shoved his hand inside her underwear. He found her wet, incredibly wet, a slick heat that made him groan into her mouth.
“You’re soaking,” he breathed, his fingers sliding through her folds, circling her clit with a rough, knowing pressure. “Is this for me? Or is this from him? From the fight?”
“It’s from you,” she gasped, her head spinning. “It’s always from you.”
He pushed two fingers inside her, curling them, stretching her. “This is my cunt. He wanted it. He thought about it. But it’s mine.” He added a third finger, the stretch bordering on painful, a deliberate possession. “Aren’t you?”
“Yours,” she whimpered, her hips bucking against his hand.
He withdrew his fingers, glistening in the dim light, and brought them to his mouth, sucking them clean with a lewd, intense stare. “Mine.”
He turned her around roughly, facing the wall. He pushed her shoulders down until she was bent over, her hands flat against the cold brick. He yanked her jeans and underwear down to her knees in one ruthless motion. The vulnerability was absolute, the submission complete.
He freed himself, the thick length of him slapping against her thigh. He didn’t tease. He guided his cock to her entrance and pushed inside with one relentless, deep thrust.
The feeling was breathtaking, a fusion of punishment and ecstasy. He filled her utterly, stretching her to the limit. He held there, buried to the hilt, his body pressed against her back, his mouth at her ear.
“Every time he looks at you,” he whispered, his voice ragged, “I’m going to think of this. Of you bent over, taking my cock like a good girl. Of this tight, greedy pussy milking me dry. He’ll see you smile, and I’ll know you’re thinking of how I fuck you. He’ll hear you laugh, and I’ll know you’re remembering the taste of my come.”
He began to move, slow, deep, punishing strokes that forced gasps from her lungs with each impact. The brick scraped her palms. The sounds were obscene—the wet slap of their joining, his guttural grunts, her choked cries.
“Tell me whose you are.”
“Yours!”
“Louder.”
“Yours, Michael! God, fuck, yours!”
His pace quickened, becoming frantic, brutal. One hand fisted in her hair, pulling her head back. The other clamped on her hip, holding her in place as he pounded into her. It was raw, animalistic, a fuck that had nothing to do with love and everything to do with ownership and the exorcism of a rival’s ghost.
“I’m gonna come,” he growled, his rhythm shattering. “I’m gonna fill this perfect cunt so full you’ll drip with me for days. So everyone knows. So he knows.”
His climax was a violent, shuddering event. He drove into her one final, crushing time and roared, a raw, unrestrained sound that echoed off the alley walls as he emptied himself inside her in hot, pulsing jets. She felt every pulse, the intimate flood branding her from the inside.
Her own orgasm had been building on the edge of pain and overwhelming sensation. His words, his possessiveness, the sheer physical dominance tipped her over. It crashed through her, a silent, shattering convulsion that clamped around him, milking him through the last of his release.
He collapsed over her, his weight pressing her into the wall, his breath sobbing against her neck. They stayed like that, joined, for long minutes, the reality of the alley—the garbage, the distant city sounds—seeping back in.
Slowly, he softened and slipped out. He gently pulled her clothes back into place, his hands now tender, almost reverent. He turned her and gathered her into his arms, holding her tightly against his chest where she could feel his heart hammering against her cheek.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured into her hair. “I’m so sorry. I lost my mind.”
She clung to him, not speaking, the adrenaline leaching away to leave a deep, unnerving quiet.
He took her home. In the shower, he washed her with meticulous care, as if cleansing her of the entire night. He didn’t speak. Neither did she. The words were too dangerous.
In bed, he held her from behind, his body a fortress around hers. His lips brushed her shoulder.
“When I was seven,” he said into the darkness, his voice quiet and far away, “a bigger boy at school trapped me in a equipment cage. Padlocked it. Said he’d leave me there all night. I screamed until I had no voice. No one came. I’ve always been… good. Polite. A project. For coaches, for scouts, for the media. That cage is always there. The feeling of being trapped, of someone having the key and choosing not to use it.”
His arms tightened around her. “Tonight, when Pavlo told me… I was back in that cage. And he had the key. He was laughing.”
Vanja understood then. This wasn’t just jealousy. It was a childhood terror weaponized, a ghost wearing Joshua Kimmich’s face. Michael’s brutal possession in the alley wasn’t just about marking her; it was his way of screaming until his voice gave out, proving he could break the lock.
She turned in his arms, cupping his face. In the faint light from the window, his eyes were wide, wounded. The fierce predator was gone, leaving the scared boy.
“You’re not in a cage,” she whispered. “And I’m not a lock. I’m the one who stays. I’m the one who comes for you.”
A shudder ran through him. He buried his face in her neck, and she felt the hot, shocking dampness of tears against her skin. He cried silently, his body shaking with the release of a poison he’d carried for twenty years. She held him, stroking his hair, until the tremors subsided and his breathing evened into sleep.
She lay awake, staring at the ceiling. The taste of the night was complex now—ash and champagne, fury and salt tears. She had seen the deepest, most damaged chamber of his heart. There was no going back from that.
Down the hall, in her perfect study, her annotated copy of Geertz sat on the shelf. Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight. She thought of the stakes, the status battles, the bloody, ritualized conflict where everything was wagered.
She understood now. She wasn’t just living with a footballer. She was living inside the deep play. And the stakes, she realized as she listened to his steady breath, had just become limitless.
The stillness of the penthouse at dawn was absolute. Vanja watched the first grey light define the sprawling, empty space around them—the cruel geometry of his wealth, the silent testimony of his isolation. His breath warmed her neck. His arm, slung heavy across her waist, felt less like an embrace and more like an anchor chain. He had shown her the rotting timbers beneath the golden hull. The responsibility of that knowledge was a cold weight in her chest.
She carefully extricated herself. The marble floor was icy under her bare feet as she walked to her study. She didn’t turn on the light. Her fingers found the worn spine of The Interpretation of Cultures on the shelf. She pulled it down, clutching it to her chest like a talisman. From this room, his insane, perfect gift, she stared back into the darkness where he slept.
He found her there an hour later. She was sitting in the leather chair, the book unopened in her lap, just watching the city wake up. He stood in the doorway, wearing only his black sweatpants, his hair dishevelled, his eyes clear but shadowed.
“You left the bed,” he said. His voice was morning-rough, stripped bare.
“I needed to think.”
“About cages.”
“About locks,” she corrected softly. She looked at him. “And about the people who keep trying to turn other people into them.”
He leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms. The defensive posture was back. “And what did you decide?”
She placed the book on the desk. The soft thud was final. “That I’m not a lock. But I could be a sanctuary. If you stop trying to break the door down every time you’re scared.”
He flinched as if she’d slapped him again. The truth of it hung between them. He pushed off the frame and walked to her, kneeling before the chair so his eyes were level with hers. The submission in the gesture was profound.
“I don’t know how else to be,” he admitted, the words dragged from somewhere painful. “It’s all instinct. See a threat, eliminate it. Want something, take it. It’s the only language that’s ever worked.”
“Then learn a new one.” She took his face in her hands. “With me.”
He turned his head, pressing a fervent kiss to her palm. “Teach me.”
The next week was a tense, deliberate recalibration. He went to training. She worked in her study, her focus periodically shattered by the memory of his tears soaking her skin. They were careful with each other, polite, like bomb disposal experts circling an unstable device. The unresolved energy from the alley, from his confession, condensed into a thick, electric atmosphere in the penthouse.
It broke on a Thursday afternoon. He came home early, the dynamic tension of a full-press training session still radiating from him. He found her curled on the sofa, reading a journal article on tribal signifiers in modern football subcultures.
“Pavlo told Kimmich to transfer,” he said, dumping his gym bag. His tone was conversational, but his knuckles were white where he gripped a water bottle.
Vanja looked up, her heart stuttering. “What?”
“This morning. In the locker room. Said if he ever looked in your direction again, he’d finish what I started. That he was a cancer in the squad.” Michael took a long swallow of water, his throat working. “Kimmich went straight to the manager. There’s a meeting tomorrow. Pavlo might be fined. Or suspended.”
“Christ, Aleks,” she whispered, dropping the journal. The protective fury of her friend warmed her even as it terrified her. The fallout was a spreading stain.
Michael’s gaze was on her, hyper-focused. “He did it for you. He’d burn his career for you.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I just wanted to tear his throat out in an alley. Pavlo… he’s strategic. He’s permanent. It’s different.”
There it was. The new ghost. Not a rival for her body, but for her heart’s allegiance. The fear was more subtle, more insidious.
She stood. “Are you jealous of Aleksandar Pavlovic? My best friend? The one who held my hair back when I puked up cheap vodka at seventeen?”
“Yes.” The admission was stark and immediate. “Because he knows those stories. He has the time I don’t. He has a right to you I can never have. And he just proved it.”
This was the deep play. Not with fists or cocks, but with loyalty and history. The stakes were indeed limitless.
Vanja crossed the room until she stood before him. She took the water bottle from his hand and set it aside. “You want a right to me?” she asked, her voice low. “A permanent, strategic right? One everyone can see?”
He watched her, suspicion and a desperate hope warring in his eyes. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying stop trying to own the past. Build the future.” She held his gaze, unwavering. “Marry me.”
The air left the room. He stared at her, utterly still. She saw the words register, saw the shock morph into something like awe, then into a blazing, terrifying certainty.
“What?”
“You heard me. You want to eliminate every threat, real or imagined? You want to learn a new language? Let’s write it in a registry office. Make it a fact. So the next time you feel that cage door shut, you can look at your fucking hand and know I chose to be there with you. Legally. Irrevocably.”
A wild, disbelieving laugh burst from him. He dragged a hand over his mouth. “You’re serious.”
“Deadly.”
He surged forward, catching her face, kissing her with a fervour that tasted of salvation. “Yes. God, yes. Now. Today.”
It wasn’t that day, but it was the next. He called in a constellation of favours, his clout as a superstar bending bureaucratic reality. There was no ring, no family, no white dress. There was only a grim, determined haste, as if they were racing a coming storm.
They stood in a stark, brightly lit room in the Munich registry office at four-forty-seven p.m. on a Friday. Pavlo was their witness, his face a careful blank until Vanja handed him her phone to take a picture. He looked at the screen, then at Michael, and gave a slow, approving nod. The silent transfer of guardianship was complete.
The officiant, a stern woman in a grey suit, recited the dry, legal phrases in German. Vanja wore a simple cream silk slip dress she’d bought that morning. Michael wore a dark suit, no tie. His hand was unbearably warm as he slid a plain platinum band onto her finger, a temporary placeholder he’d purchased from a jeweller near the stadium. His own band was a matching, simple circle of metal.
“You may kiss.”
Michael didn’t need permission. He kissed her as he had in the alley—with a consuming, desperate totality that left the officiant clearing her throat. It was a seal. A brand. When he pulled back, his eyes were bright.
“Frau Olise,” he whispered, testing the sound.
It felt like a suit of armour. And a sentence.
They celebrated in the penthouse, just the three of them. Pavlo opened obscenely expensive champagne. “To my best friend,” he said, raising his glass, his eyes on Michael. “And to my other best friend, who apparently needed a legally binding document to know he’s stuck with her. Don’t fuck it up.”
They drank. The mood was strangely buoyant, a shared, surreal disbelief cushioning them. When Pavlo left with a last, hard hug for Vanja, the silence that settled was different. Charged, but not with tension. With consequence.
Michael looked at her across the vast living room, his new wife standing in the twilight. The word reverberated in the space between them.
“Come here,” he said, his voice soft.
She walked to him. He didn’t move, just let her come, his eyes tracing every step. When she was within reach, he hooked a finger in the thin strap of her slip dress and tugged it down her shoulder. He bent his head and placed his mouth on the bared skin, not kissing, just breathing her in.
“Mine,” he murmured, the word vibrating against her. “My wife.”
The possession in the word was different now. It was solemnized. It held the cold weight of law and the fever heat of his devotion. It unlocked something in him, something that sought not to punish or claim, but to consecrate.
He lifted her into his arms, carrying her to the bedroom. He laid her on the duvet and undressed her with a slow, ritualistic care that made her shiver. He removed his own clothes, his gaze never leaving her body. In the dim light, the new pale bands on their fingers glinted.
He covered her body with his, but instead of pushing inside her, he began a slow, meticulous exploration with his mouth. He started at her ankles, kissing the delicate bones, licking a path up her calf. He worshipped the inside of her thighs, breathing deeply against her dampening skin before moving higher. He was mapping her, committing every contour, every gasp, to memory under this new statute.
“This is our first time,” he said, his voice muffled against her stomach. “As this. As us.”
When his mouth finally found her cunt, it was with a groan of pure reverence. He ate her with a lavish, unhurried intensity, his tongue circling her clit before plunging deep inside her, drinking from her as if she were a sacrament. The orgasm he built was slow, tectonic, a rising wave of pleasure so profound it felt spiritual. She cried out, her hands fisting in his hair, her body bowing off the bed.
He moved up her body, his mouth glistening with her. He kissed her, letting her taste herself on his tongue.
“Now,” she panted, pulling at his hips. “I need you inside me. Now.”
He positioned himself, the broad head of his cock pressing against her swollen, sensitive entrance. He pushed in with a relentless, gradual pressure, filling the clutching, wet heat of her. She was so tight, so impossibly full. He buried himself to the hilt and stopped, his whole body trembling with the effort of control.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice wrecked.
She opened her eyes. His face was above hers, strained, beautiful, his gaze holding hers with terrifying intimacy.
“This pussy,” he said, whispering the obscenity like a prayer as he began to move in deep, rolling strokes. “Is my wife’s pussy. This come I’m going to pump into you is going to fill my wife’s womb. You understand? You’re stuck with me. You’re fucking stuck with me.”
The raw, legal finality of his words, coupled with the exquisite friction of his cock, shattered her. She came again, a harder, sharper climax that made her scream his name—his real name, not a nickname, not a curse—into the quiet room.
He followed, his rhythm fracturing into hard, desperate thrusts. “Vanja,” he groaned, a broken chant. “Vanja. My wife. My wife.” His release flooded her, hot and endless, a physical signing of the contract. He collapsed, his weight crushing her into the mattress, his face buried in her hair.
A long time later, he stirred. He slipped out of her, but immediately gathered her against him, his front to her back. His hand found hers in the darkness, their wedding bands clicking softly together.
“I’ll learn,” he whispered, his lips against her shoulder. “The new language. I swear.”
She intertwined her fingers with his, holding the promise tight. Outside, Munich glittered, unaware. The cage door, she thought, was still there. But they had just welded themselves together inside it. It was a different kind of lock. One of their own making.
The knock on the penthouse door at eleven a.m. the next morning was peremptory. Vanja, wrapped in Michael’s dressing gown, answered it. A club executive in a sharp suit stood there, flanked by the team’s head of security. His expression was diplomatically grave.
“Frau Olise,” he said, the name unfamiliar on his tongue. “My congratulations. We need to speak with Michael. Urgently. It’s about Joshua Kimmich and Aleksandar Pavlovic. There’s been a development.”