From Russia, With Love

Ahha (Anna) Antipova was four the day her strung-out mother left her and her brother on the side of the road. After a year in a Russian orphanage, the siblings were brought to America by English-speaking people who promised a safe, forever family. Learning a new language and culture was nothing to Anna, who grew into an overachiever in a family with strict rules around biological verses adopted children. The primary caretaker to her adoptive parents' blood children, Anna spent most of her teen years doing anything she could to please her parents. In fact, she excelled in everything she touched. Abram went the other way, stirring up trouble and expecting his younger sister to clean up his messes. She didn't mind, it was only another year or two, Anna reasoned. Besides, he's all I have. Until one day... Two weeks before high school graduation, Anna laid in an emergency room surrounded by strangers. With permanent scars at the hands of her adoptive mother, she needed to escape a home that was no longer safe. The problem was, she was only sixteen. A minor with no legal rights to emancipate herself, Anna struggled to find a way out. Counting on the kindness of strangers, Anna found herself desperate to find a true forever home, but it was not easy. Is it possible to trust when every adult in your life has hurt you? Or are some scars just too deep to heal? Will it take going back to the beginning to find out? Or, could forever already be here? Is it possible to EVER truly escape?