The Mountain Highway That Took My Love and Child Chapter 06

The Mountain Highway That Took My Love and Child Chapter 06

“Julian, how long are you going to keep this up?”

“Lena is dead. Let her go.”

Julian spun around. Mia stood in the doorway, her face flushed and tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Just let her go,” Mia sobbed. “You tortured her while she was alive. Do you have to disturb her peace in death too?”

“How many times did I beg you to stop? What did you do instead?”

“You only cared about your sick obsessions. Even now, you still refuse to face what you did.”

Mia grabbed his arm and dragged him over to look at the photos the medical examiner had taken at the scene.

The raw, unedited photos were horrifying.

In the photos, the body’s broken neck bent at a sickening angle. Half of her mangled body hung out of the wrecked car.

Blood continued to seep from between her legs, beneath her swollen belly.

Julian went pale.

Mia choked out, “You killed her. If you hadn’t been so stubborn, she would still be alive.”

“I begged you whole time. If you had listened to me just once, Lena wouldn’t have died.”

She grabbed another photo of the wrecked car and slammed it down in front of him.

“Look! This was the CB radio in the car! The microphone was shattered, so she couldn’t call for help!”

“And the automatic collision-detection and alert system that kept you so calm? It failed on the very first impact!”

“Do you even know how many times she crashed?”

“Every time the car stopped, it was because she had crashed. But you didn’t care. You kept restarting the program. She hit those rocks at least ten times.”

Just thinking about the trail of blood along Dead Man’s Curve left Mia gasping for air.

“Shut up,” Julian muttered, covering his ears and backing into the corner.

But Mia kept crying and hurling accusations at him.

“I told you to shut up! Do you hear me?”

Julian’s eyes were bloodshot. He pressed his hands over his ears, trembling as he refused to accept that I was gone.

Just then, the morgue’s heavy doors opened. An elderly couple entered, leaning on each other for support.

My parents had arrived.

My mother collapsed first, weeping uncontrollably.

When she received the call, she couldn’t believe it. How could her daughter be dead when she was supposed to be safe at the Sterling Estate, carrying their grandchild?

But the sight of the pale body shattered her denial. She pulled away from my father and stumbled toward the gurney.

“Julian, what happened?” she cried.

“Lena was fine! How could she be dead? The police said she was drag racing up the mountain!”

“But she was pregnant! How could she possibly have been drag racing?”

Facing my mother’s frantic questions, Julian couldn’t utter a word.

From the moment he arrived, my father had kept his eyes on Julian.

There was no way his daughter died such a senseless death. Something was terribly wrong.

He lunged forward, grabbed Julian by the collar, and roared.

“Julian! We welcomed you into our family, and this is how you treated our daughter?”

“Lena’s mother is right! She was six months pregnant! How could she possibly have driven a car up Dead Man’s Curve to drag race?”

“Tell me the truth. How did Lena die?”

Julian lowered his head, unable to meet my parents’ eyes.