His Runaway Queen (Effie and Leo) novel Chapter 1

Effie

Growing up, I had the best life possible. I had my mom and dad and even two older brothers. I was the youngest and always treated like a princess. My dad was my hero, and I tried to spend all my free time with him. If I wasn't with him, I would usually be at my mammaw's bakery or at her house, helping her bake. I loved to be in the kitchen with her, and I even talked to her about my dream of going to culinary school for college to be a baker when I was old enough. She was my dad's mom, and I spent a lot of time with her.

My brothers were both computer geniuses, just like my dad. So if they weren't hanging out with their friends, then they were with Dad in his office talking about computers and learning anything new that they could.

They were also both really good at sports. My oldest brother played football and my other brother played baseball. They both got scholarships to college to play professional ball. There was even talk of them being able to go pro with it. Even though they both liked to play, I wasn't sure if they would continue with it after college. They wanted to work with my dad in the family business at my Poppy's company.

They were really good brothers and even though there were a few years between us, they always tried to do stuff with me. They tried to get me to play sports with them, but I wasn't very good at it. I even ended up blacking my own damn eye one time. I still can't figure out how I managed that one. But they always told me that I didn't need to be able to play sports with them.

I was good at cooking, and they were good at eating, so they would do that with me. They tried to help in the kitchen, but they weren't good at that at all. So I guess we were even in that way.

Everything was going fine in my life until I turned fifteen. By then, both of my brothers were already in college. My youngest brother was eighteen and had just started college, and my oldest brother was nineteen and a sophomore in college. I was the only one left at home, and more often than not, I was with my mammaw or my dad. I was never close to my mom, so I wasn't often around her.

My mom and dad were hardly ever at home at the same time, and when they were, they had been fighting more and more. When I turned sixteen, they got a divorce, and even though my mom didn't want me, she fought to take me away from my dad. I was the only thing that she got in the divorce since my dad had proof that she had been cheating on him for years. The guy that she was sneaking around with was some powerful guy and he tried to do what he could to get his lawyers to take everything from my dad. But because of all the proof that my dad had, he wasn't able to make it happen. So he helped to take me from him instead.

Even though I didn't want to go and was old enough to make up my mind, the judge made me go with them. I later found out that he paid the judge off to at least make that happen. That was all that he was able to do, though.

Even though I was taken from my dad and uprooted from my home, I still called and texted him all the time. Mom's new asshole boyfriend tried to take my phone from me and give me one that was monitored by him, but I refused. I wouldn't come off with my phone and wouldn't let them have it. When he tried to stop me from taking it, I just turned the ringers off and hid it in my bra so that they couldn't find it. I never used the phone that he tried to give me and always left it at his house when we moved.

When we moved, they moved me across the country to Russia, and I was NOT happy about that.

I was very smart and had a photographic memory and could remember everything that I read or listened to. I could also speak several languages as well as read and write in them. My dad knew, but my mom didn't care about my education because she never wanted me. When she got pregnant with me, she wanted to have an abortion, but my dad wouldn't let her. Because of that, she has always hated me and never wanted to have much to do with me. That's why I always spent most of my time with my dad and my mammaw. At one point, she even tried to tell my dad that I didn't belong to him, but a DNA test proved that I did.

Since she never wanted me, she didn't pay attention to how I did in school or anything. That was all up to dad to take care of. So she didn't realize or even know that I was exceptionally smart. I could have graduated from school early, but I didn't want to.

So because she didn't know how smart I was, I was able to put an app on my tablet that helped me learn how to speak, read, and write Russian. By the time that we got to Russia, I knew the language and could understand everything that went on around me. But I didn't let any of them know.

We got settled in his house in Russia and I hated it with a passion of a thousand suns. I wanted to go back home. I wanted to be back with my dad and mammaw. I didn't trust this guy at all and knowing what a b***h my mother is. I had a really bad feeling about being here. Turns out that the feeling I had was correct. And as I turned seventeen, I paid closer attention to what was going on around me.

Thankfully, even though my mother got custody of me, my dad got visitation and I was allowed to spend holidays and the summer with him. Every chance that I got, I went to stay with him. I let him know about not feeling safe being over there and we made a plan to get me away from there, just in case. So that if something happened, I could get away and no one would be the wiser.

The only thing that I hated was that I wouldn't be coming back home to Washington State. I would be starting over in a new state, and I would be alone at first.

In the year that I had spent over here, I managed to make friends with some boys who were the sons of the head of the Russian Mafia. They were Rodion Smirnov's sons.

My mother's husband was one of the members of the Russian Mafia but he wasn't at the top of the food chain so to speak. He was just a lowly peon in the middle of the totem pole. But he had dreams of being higher up in it all and even one day being a leader.

I grew the closest to the oldest boy, Leandro. We spent a lot of time together and eventually started to date. Because I was still underage, we never took it further than holding hands. Right before I turned eighteen, we finally slept together. It was the most magical night of my life.

I was in love with Leo and wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. I thought that he felt the same way about me.

Boy, how wrong that I was.

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