15. Conversation
Aiden and Chloe were still fussing around him when Maximilian finally spoke in a calm, authoritative voice:
"Both of you go upstairs and rest. I need to speak with Uncle and Aunt. Alone."
Aiden blinked.
Chloe pouted.
"But—"
"No."
Maximilian's tone held no room for argument.
Aiden nudged Chloe's arm.
"Come on. If Max uses that voice, it's serious."
Chloe hesitated, looking worried. "If… if something's wrong with Auntie, tell me, okay?"
Maximilian softened just a little and nodded.
"I will. Go."
Only when their footsteps disappeared up the staircase did Maximilian's shoulders drop slightly.
He turned toward the couple sitting on the sofa—
Uncle Adrian and Aunt Liana, his father's younger brother and his wife.
They looked at him with gentle eyes.
"Come sit, Max," Aunt Liana said softly.
"We're here."
Maximilian walked forward and sat opposite them, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped together.
The CEO mask faded… not gone, but fragile.
Uncle Adrian leaned closer.
"What happened at the hospital?"
Maximilian inhaled sharply.
And told them everything...
Uncle Adrian's face drained of color.
Aunt Liana covered her mouth in horror.
When Maximilian finished, silence pressed heavily around them.
Aunt Liana's voice trembled,
"M-Max… sweetheart… are you sure you weren't hallucinating from stress?"
Maximilian looked up sharply—
not angry, but deeply wounded.
"I know what I saw," he said quietly.
"Mother wasn't speaking. Something else was using her voice. And there was a shadow…"
He clenched his fists.
"It followed me."
Aunt Liana's eyes shimmered with fear.
"Is Eleanor… safe now?" she whispered.
Maximilian swallowed hard.
"They stabilized her. But she's not waking up."
Aunt Liana's breath hitched. "Oh God…"
Uncle Adrian leaned forward, hands clasped tightly.
"Maximilian… did it… touch you?"
Maximilian felt a cold ripple down his spine.
He remembered the whisper in the mansion.
The silhouette in his father's room.
The chill that crept behind him.
"…No."
Aunt Liana turned toward her husband in shock.
"Adrian—what are you thinking?"
He didn't answer immediately.
Instead he looked at Maximilian with the heaviness of a man who knew more than he wanted to.
"Max," he said quietly.
"Tell me honestly… has anything like this happened before?"
Maximilian frowned.
"No. Not to me. Never."
"Not even as a child?" Adrian pressed.
"No… I don't remember anything."
Uncle Adrian sat back, rubbing his face with trembling hands.
Aunt Liana watched him, scared.
"Adrian," she said softly, "you don't think… it's happening again, do you?"
Maximilian stiffened.
His eyes turned sharp.
"What do you mean again?"
Uncle Adrian looked at him, conflicted, torn between fear and responsibility.
"There was something your father never wanted you to know," he said quietly.
"Something connected to Hollowmist…
to your family…
and to your mother."
Maximilian's expression hardened.
"What. Happened."
Uncle Adrian hesitated—
then exhaled, defeated.
"Before you were born…
your mother survived something that no human should survive.
A curse…
a haunting…
a darkness that nearly killed her."
Aunt Liana gripped his hand tightly.
"And Adrian…
it's found her again."
Maximilian's jaw clenched, fury mixing with fear.
"If something is trying to hurt her," he said in a deadly low voice,
"then it wants war."
His uncle placed a trembling hand on his shoulder.
"Max… this isn't something you can fight like a business rival."
Maximilian's eyes darkened.
"Oh trust me, Uncle," he whispered,
"I can fight anything that tries to take my family from me."
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