Bittersweet Heroine

Title Page

Copyright Page

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

M
y name is Valentina. I am the only woman who worked for Kerstan and successfully paid off my debt. I want to tell you what it’s like to recover from being used for money. I want to tell you that everything gets better and I want to tell you that eventually you’ll be okay, but I can’t. It never gets better and you never get over it. You’re left feeling used, unworthy, and lost.

My interests no longer lie in the Red Light District. At least they didn’t until I heard rumors of what was happening in his home. An American girl who was basically stolen to work for him, by a man she knew but always was kept away from. A new house owner of no less than three years who treats his girls horribly. The rumor is that his treatment of the girls is all that he wishes upon her, but doesn’t have the heart to inflict himself. That’s why he had Kerstan take her. That’s why she became the best at what she did.

I don’t want to say that I’m a hero by any means, but I want to save her. Even though I don’t know her, I feel that the best way to destroy what these vile men have put her through would be to save her.
Saint Valentina; Patron saint of abused whores,
I think to myself with an amused smile.

As I sit in my small bedroom in my even smaller apartment, I dress myself in my black lingerie. Kerstan’s favorite when he used to send me out and I remember that now I am no longer Valentina, I’m Danique again; the best whore that the Red Light District had ever seen until the American girl, Lieve.

As I pulled on my striped white and black fitted shirt, my black short flare skirt, and my favorite pair of black high heels, I know that to undo Kerstan and save the American girl, I have to go back into what I left.

I have to immerse myself back into the Red Light District.

The only way to really save myself once and for all is to save her too.

I take one last look around my small bedroom before I turn off the light and leave my apartment. The best place to start this would be the one place I had managed to escape.

I have to start at Kerstan’s.

I
knocked on the door and waited. One of the elderly women that Kerstan used as decoys to his business would open the door, I’d ask to see him, and stay outside. If I walked back into that house voluntarily it would be like asking him to take me back and I refused to give him the ability to have power over me again.

As expected, one of the grandmothers opened the door and greeted me in shock.
She recognizes me,
I thought with a tight smile.

“I wish to speak to Kerstan. Tell him Danique is here,” I said evenly.

She nodded and opened the door slightly gesturing for me to come in. I shook my head firmly and sat down on the steps. I heard her close the door firmly and the sound of her hurried footsteps.

It couldn’t have been more than five minutes before the door opened again and Kerstan stepped out.

“Could this be a dream?” he asked with a chuckle as he descended the steps and stood in front of me.

“I’m more of a nightmare,” I replied with a smirk.

“Danique. What brings you back to my humble home?” he inquired, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I’ve been hearing rumors,” I said conversationally. I glanced up at him, but he didn’t reply, he only raised an eyebrow in curiosity. “There’s a girl, an American that used to be here in this house. I’m wondering where she is now.”

I already knew the answer, I just didn’t know how to get to where I was going and I needed him to give me the information.

“Where have you heard rumors that I would have an American working for me?” he asked evenly.

“I run into old clients from time to time,” I replied with a shrug. “I hear this Lieve is the new Danique and I’m dying to meet the girl who has taken on my legacy and surpassed it.”

“Jealousy doesn’t look good on you,” he said with a grin.

“You mistake curiosity for jealousy, Kerstan,” I replied shaking my head. “You never were very empathetic though.”

He threw his head back and laughed. I always did enjoy his laugh because it was a rare thing to hear. I smiled in amusement and waited for him to compose himself.

“She isn’t here. She hasn’t been for quite some time.”

“I know that,” I replied rolling my eyes. “I’m here because I want to know where to find her.”

Kerstan eyed me for a moment before he shook his head. “You should know that I won’t tell you. However, if you’d like to work for me again, I have a place for you.”

I got to my feet and looked into his eyes, “Never again will I
ever
ask to work for you. I paid off my debts and I’m a free woman now. But if you change your mind on letting me know where the American is, you know where I live.”

I turned and started to walk away when he called out my name. Not the name he gave me, but my actual name.

“Valentina! Wait!”

With a sigh, I stopped walking and turned slightly to glance at him. Coming toward me, he rubbed the back of his neck uneasily as he stopped a few feet away from me.

“This isn’t any of your business. I don’t understand your sudden interest in Amity—Lieve, but you should know that this is something completely different from your situation.”

“Her name is Amity?” I ask curiously. “Amity what?”

“Leave it alone,” he said finally losing his gentlemanly composure and sticking a finger in my face. When I opened my mouth to protest, he turned on his heel and stalked back to the front doors of his house, walked inside, and slammed them behind him.

Crossing my arms over my chest I looked up at the windows. So there was something different about this American, Amity. This wasn’t a business deal; this was a vendetta. The perfect revenge designed to humiliate her and take away any dignity she had left.

I
decided to walk around downtown Amsterdam instead of going home right away. Kerstan’s warning played over and over in my mind. He wanted me to “leave it alone” but I was a naturally curious person which was how I ended up in his house. He also knew that I was never one to really do what he said so I was left wondering how I was going to figure out this mystery. How was I going to get to this American girl without knowing where to start?

With a sigh, I sat on a bench in a pleasant park that overlooked the Rhine River and weighed my options.

The first was that I could knock on Kerstan’s door every day for the rest of my life hoping he’d answer. The second was that I could ask around and see if anyone knew where the Amity girl was. And the last option, the one I wanted the most to avoid, was to strike a bargain with Kerstan. My services for the information I was looking for.

Redemption is such a bitch,
I thought to myself wryly.

I decided I would find a hotel in the area for the evening. Tomorrow, I would go back to Kerstan with my decision. Whatever that may be.

Amity

I
t took days, but I finally stopped crying. I was sitting in a room underneath the house alone and above me I could hear the other girls walking around, the front door opening from time to time. I would hear Luuk’s voice raise in anger causing the tears to spring to my eyes again. I fought them back every time; I refused to give him any further feeling of worth at the expense of myself. Instead I stayed where he put me after I stupidly made my way here and I stubbornly wouldn’t come out. Luuk told me that he would leave the door unlocked for me and that when I was ready to join the other girls, he would welcome me back upstairs into his home.
Luuk,
I thought bitterly to myself,
where the fuck did you come up with that name?

“Luuk” as he called himself was a ghost from my past. I understood now why the things were happening to me that were. I understood now that all hope was pretty much lost on any kind of redemption. The feeling of absolute shock and dismay when I looked up as he called out my name. The realization of who had been doing this to me and why Kerstan had once told me that I wasn’t ready for this encounter yet made more sense to me than anything in the world.

Luuk was actually Smith Lennox; Theo’s younger brother and we have a very bitter history.

Smith never thought I was good enough for Theo and Theo always thought that Smith thought I was perfect enough for
him.
I never thought of Smith as anything other than my true love’s brother; he never thought of me as anything other than a meaningless whore, which he had told me I was quite a few times, prompting endless fights with Theo. It got worse when I slipped one night and drunkenly had sex with Smith and with as much as I hate to readmit this to myself, I know that Theo chose me over his family and that only wound up sending Smith to a dark place of resentment and apparently vengeance.

A soft tap at the door distracted me from my thoughts. I glanced over as it began to open slowly and Famke peeked her head timidly in.

“Amity?”

“Still here,” I confirmed softly.

“Can I come in?” she asked.

“Yes, but be careful not to push the door closed all the way or we’re both fucked until
Luuk
decides to let us out,” I said emphasizing his name angrily.

I watched her as she came into the dimly lit room, pulling a chair in behind her, and closing the door only slightly. Famke brought her chair over and sat it across from me, smiling as she sat. I raised an eyebrow at her and crossed my arms over my chest waiting to find out what she wanted. I knew she was only trying to be kind, hell the girl had traveled half of Amsterdam to find me, but I wasn’t in the position to start making friends now. Especially knowing that Minnie was upstairs somewhere being left to the sadistic whims of that piece of shit.

“You know him, don’t you?” she asked, after a few moments of thoughtful silence.

I nodded.

“How?”

“That’s none of your business,” I said, shaking my head, “I’m sorry, I don’t want to be a bitch to you because I know what you went through to make Betje feel better, but I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep trying to befriend you girls only to have you traded off, raped, beaten, or killed. I have enough on my conscience already and he’s just another reminder of where I went wrong.”

My words stung her, I could tell by the look on her face. I would be as verbally abusive to them as I had to be to be able to keep them all safe regardless of how they would think of me in the end. Unfortunately my priorities had switched now. Instead of coming to break Minikin out, I spent my days in this room wondering what I could possibly give Smith to let her go.

“Tell me something,” Smith said entering the room and giving Famke such a dangerous look that she left me alone with him. “How many years did you think it was my brother that did this to you? How many years did you fuck random men and women for money and just know that it had to be him even if you never uttered the words out loud?”

The smug look on his face as he took the seat across from me was enough to make me want to punch him in the face. Unfortunately for me, once I came to realize who had sold me to Kerstan, I had lost all of my inner strength. The fire that burned inside of me night after night, man after woman after man, seemed to be snuffed out immediately.

“I never suspected Theo,” I replied quietly.

“Liar!” he yelled, slamming his fist on the table. “You always suspected him, because of how horribly you hurt him. It’s okay to finally admit it, Amity. If it makes it easier on you, he stopped loving you when you whored around with me. I might even think it’s safe to say that he never truly loved you.”

I felt the hot tears stream down my cheeks and wiped them away quickly before they had a chance to fall completely. I sniffled and took a deep breath. I wanted desperately to tell him how wrong he was and how in love Theo and I were and how much I loved him still. I wanted to tell him that no matter how many men and women I had been forced to fuck for money, that I still had dreams of being in Theo’s arms one day. But I knew he wouldn’t believe me and it would be a waste of breath because a small, terrifying thought floated in the back of my mind. What if he really
doesn’t
love me anymore?

Valentina

I
t had taken a few days, but I finally wound up getting a lead. Apparently some of my former customers told me that an American girl had been seen in the home of Luuk from time to time. There were whispers about her from the girls that took them as clients, which was a strict no no in our line of work.