The Mountain Highway That Took My Love and Child Chapter 03

The Mountain Highway That Took My Love and Child Chapter 03

Julian hadn’t always been so ruthless.

Mia hadn’t always been so rebellious.

Eight years earlier, online dating was becoming more common.

Shortly after starting college, Mia met someone online.

When summer break began, she wanted to meet him in person. Fearing that her brother would stop her, she told him she was taking a trip with me.

Mia clutched my arm and begged me.

“Lena, you’re the best. Just help me keep this from Julian this one time, okay?”

“He trusts you. He’d never suspect you were covering for me. Please, don’t say anything!”

Seeing my best friend on the verge of tears, I relented.

I gave in.

It became the decision I regretted most up until the day I died.

Mia promised to be back in three days.

But three days became six.

Two weeks passed.

She was still nowhere to be found.

Then Julian discovered I wasn’t traveling with his sister at all.

His eyes were bloodshot when he confronted me.

“Where is Mia, Lena? Wasn’t she supposed to be traveling with you?”

“Where did she go? Her birth certificate is missing from the house.”

My stomach dropped.

I tried calling Mia, but her phone was off.

Realizing I could no longer hide the truth, I admitted that she had gone to another city to meet someone she knew online.

Julian investigated him and uncovered the horrifying truth.

He was a widower in his forties.

He had beaten three former wives to death.

When Julian finally tracked them down and burst in with his men, Mia was already wearing a secondhand wedding dress.

She was raising a toast with the man at a makeshift wedding reception.

If she had been older, he likely would have coerced her into signing the marriage certificate.

Julian wrecked the reception, dragged his sister home and locked her in her room for three days.

Mia clawed at the door, screaming and sobbing.

“You ruined my life, Julian! Let me out. I need to see him!”

“He gives me everything I want! He doesn’t control me like you do!”

“I don’t care how old he is! At least he loves me and spoils me. That’s a million times better than living with you.”

After their parents died in a car crash, Julian became Mia’s legal guardian. He couldn’t bear the thought of his only sister throwing her life away.

But the harsher and more controlling he became, the more Mia rebelled.

She seemed determined to defy him at every turn.

Until Julian realized something.

The only time his rebellious sister lowered her guard and complied was when they both blamed me.

Julian began redirecting Mia’s punishments onto me.

When Mia stumbled home drunk from a club, Julian lined up bottles of cheap vodka and whiskey in front of her.

But he forced me to drink them.

His cold gaze fixed on me.

“Drink. You like drinking, don’t you? Then finish every bottle on the table.”

His eyes locked onto me.

But every word was meant for Mia.

Whenever I resisted, he brought up the past.

“If you hadn’t lied for Mia, she wouldn’t have nearly ended up stranded in the backwoods of Redwood Hollow,” Julian would say coldly.

“Lena, you claim to be her best friend. You have a duty to help me correct her behavior.”

I shivered beneath his gaze.

I knew exactly what that look meant.

This was your fault, Lena. There was no escape.

He hated me for nearly ruining his sister’s life.

If not for me, Mia would never have ended up in those woods.

She wouldn’t have become this defiant stranger who fought him at every turn.

He wanted things to return to the way they had been, and he wanted me to pay until his sweet, obedient sister came back.

“Fine… I understand.”

I was forced to empty every glass on the table.

I collapsed on the floor, clutching my stomach as I vomited uncontrollably.

I spent the night in the hospital having my stomach pumped. I was vomiting blood before they finally let me rest.

In the control room, Mia was still on her knees, begging Julian to let me go.

She threatened to get into the car and die with me if he refused.

Julian watched her breakdown with cold indifference.

His gaze fixed on Mia, cold and unblinking.

“Mia, you’ve wasted everything I did to raise you.”

“If she hadn’t covered for you, you might have been trafficked.”

Mia sobbed.

“But Lena is innocent! I went on my own!”

“You knew how much she cared about me, so you made her carry all the guilt!”

“You wanted to break her so you could control her!”

“Julian, Lena is not your property!”

“She didn’t deserve to be used to punish me!”

Mia suddenly lunged forward and bit the security guard holding her back.

She threw herself toward the console, desperate to grab the laptop controlling the car.