The Mountain Highway That Took My Love and Child Chapter 01

The Mountain Highway That Took My Love and Child Chapter 01

When my missing best friend was found deep in the Backwoods of Redwood Hollow,her brother slapped me across the face.

“This is how you act as her best friend? As her sister-in-law?”

“You helped her lie to me about a trip. She almost got trafficked.”

“If I hadn’t found her in time, she’d be pumping out some old man’s kid right now!”

From that day on, Julian Sterling used me to discipline Mia Sterling.

Mia started clubbing, coming home blacked out and drunk.

He shoved my head into a basin of bottom-shelf vodka and whiskey—until I OD’d.

Mia became obsessed with her looks and wanted jaw shaving and a liquid nose job.

They strapped me down at the Unlicensed Strip Mall Medspa and sucked out my fat without consent.

The second I flinched, he threw the trafficking incident in my face.

Guilt was his leash. And I walked.

“What right do you have to fight back? If Mia hadn’t set us up, do you think you ever would’ve married into the Sterling family?”

“She was so good to you, and you almost ruined her life.”

Three ICUs in six months.

I dropped to 80 pounds. Bones poking through.

Mia was so terrified that she never rebelled again.

Mia curled back into his shadow. Good girl again.

Then, eight years later, Mia thought it was all behind her.

She hadn’t even gotten her driver’s license yet, but she was already planning to race down Dead Man’s Curve with her friends.

When Julian found out, he snapped.

His Private Security bound my wrists and ankles.

Then he threw me into a car locked on autopilot and launched it down Dead Man’s Curve at 112.

Mia’s voice cracked. Pure terror.

“Julian! I won’t do it again! Please, stop the car!”

“Lena Hart is six months pregnant with your baby. Something could happen to her!”

Julian paused, but he didn’t seem concerned.

“She’s in a fully upgraded custom car. She’ll be fine.”

“Mia, remember this. Lena is being punished because of you.”

“Be good. Stop fighting me and making me worry about you.”

The second he finished speaking, the modified sports car slammed into the mountainside.

Agony twisted through my lower body.

Blood from my forehead blurred my vision.

Julian, you used my baby’s life and mine to teach your sister a lesson.

Are you satisfied now?

The screech of tearing metal shattered the air.

The front end of the car crumpled inward, and cracks spiderwebbed across the windows.

Blood streamed down my forehead.

A dull, tightening pain pulsed beneath my swollen belly.

Contractions.

I fought desperately against the rope binding my hands and feet.

I rubbed my skin raw, but I still couldn’t get free.

My only hope was the CB Radio.

“Julian, please. For the sake of the baby I’m carrying, just answer me.”

I screamed until my throat went raw.

Nothing.

Through lashes soaked with blood, I looked down.

At some point during the crash, the microphone on my end had shattered.

Not a sound could get through.

I was trapped in the car.

Completely alone.

The silence was so thick, all I could hear was blood dripping onto the carpet.

Then the CB Radio crackled.

Julian’s voice came through.

“Mia, how many times do I have to teach you before you understand what you did wrong?”

“If I hadn’t tied Lena to that car, would you ever learn how to grow up?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, looking exhausted.

“Do you only learn your lesson when Lena gets punished?”

He knew Mia feared nothing.

Nothing except losing me.

As long as he controlled me, he controlled Mia.

As for how I felt?

Julian had never cared.

Sure enough, Mia trembled at the madness in his voice.

“Julian, I’ll listen to you. Please let Lena go.”

“I’ll sell the car, okay? I’ll stay home and behave. I won’t cause trouble again.”

Julian gave a cold laugh.

Her pleading didn’t move him.

“How many times have you promised that before?”

“And what happened every time?”

“Only when you see what Lena looks like after stepping out of a speeding car will you finally give up and stop making these mistakes.”

As he spoke, Julian stared at the control panel.

“Why did the car stop?”

He had programmed the entire route on autopilot.

Mia’s face suddenly drained of color.

“It must’ve hit something. Julian, get Lena out of there!”

Julian rejected the idea without a second thought.

“Impossible. The car recognizes road conditions automatically. It’s not that easy for it to hit something.”

He didn’t know that the violent impact had already destroyed the collision sensors.

Mia saw that he wasn’t budging, and her eyes turned red.

“Even if the car’s fine, Lena is six months pregnant.”

“She’d bled before. Had those fake-labor scares. What if she loses the baby this time? Aren’t you worried about her at all?”

Her words made my heart tremble.

Would he worry about me?

Even if it was only for the baby inside me?

Julian froze for a second.

Something dark flickered beneath his lashes.

“I hired Lena a nutritionist. She’s had Meal Prep and Prenatal Supplements tailored to her every day.”

“Her body has already recovered. You don’t need to worry about her.”

Julian sounded completely certain.

But my heart went cold.

He hadn’t asked me once how I was feeling throughout the pregnancy.

The only time he came home,

he saw that I had become painfully thin after six months apart.

He only glanced at me and said, “How are you this skinny when you’re pregnant? Someone might think the Sterling family is abusing you.”

After that, he forced a nutritionist on me.

But I couldn’t keep down a single meal.

I threw up everything before it even settled in my stomach.

I weighed less than the eighty-five pounds I did before I got pregnant.

Julian’s arrogant voice came through the CB Radio again.

“If no alarm went off, then Lena must’ve deliberately gotten herself loose.”

“I haven’t said her punishment is over. How dare she disobey me and hit the brakes herself?”

I opened my mouth.

I wanted to tell him I hadn’t.

But Julian was already angry.

His voice iced over.

“Shut down every manual override.”

“Without my permission, nobody stops that car.”

The second he gave the order,

terror flooded through me.

The wrecked car’s engine screamed back to life.

Headlights sliced the black curve like a guillotine.

Then it shot forward.

My face went white.

Nausea tore through me as my organs seemed to twist inside my body.

Just as the speed climbed toward its limit,

there was another deafening crash.

The sports car slammed into the guardrail.

The spiderwebbed window shattered completely.

Before I could blink, my torso slammed through the shattered windshield.