Page 126 of Rio

The food is good.The insults fly.Each of the brothers throws in a jab or a laugh.It’s loud, it’s warm, it’s family.

It’s everything I never dreamed we could have, and yet, here we are.

Raquel’s sitting back in her chair, relaxed and content.Looking happier than I’ve seen her.My heart warms.

I feel on top of the world.

The servers have cleared the plates, and refilled all our drinks, and they’re about to serve dessert.

A phone rings somewhere, then Jett’s voice cuts through the air.

“What?When?”The words are sharp, and loud, causing every fork to freeze midair.

“What fresh drama is this?”I mutter under my breath.

Everyone sits forward.The air chills.The sound of laughter and chatter disintegrates with the weight of impending doom.

Jett’s face turns white.

“We’ll be there.”He hangs up, swipes his hand over his face, looks around the table at us all.

“That was the housekeeper.The old—” A muscle ticks in his jaw before he corrects himself.“Father ...was rushed to the hospital.He collapsed.Chest pain and vomiting and confusion.EMT’s took him straight to the hospital.”

A chair scrapes across the floor.Zach stands, looking deathly pale.“He’s alive, isn’t he?”

“She didn’t say otherwise so I’m assuming, yes.”Jett deadpans.

Anger flashes in Zach’s eyes.“Can’t you have anything good to say about him-”

“Let’s calm down, shall we?”I get up.“We should go.”

“He just tried to destroy Raquel, andyou,” Matteo counters, sitting back in his chair, like this isn’t shocking news.

Enzo stands up.“We should go.He is our ...father.It’s the right thing to do.”

“Amen, brother.”Dex gets up.

Everyone rises, and the warmth and laughter, the easy conversation, the delicious meal, and rare moment of unity, they vanish.

***

We walk through the quiet and sterile corridor of the Manhattan private hospital.The rooftop celebration feels like another timeline ago, and the mood has shifted from joy to something heavy and morose.

The girls are in the waiting room, and now we, the Knight boys, file into the private room.The old man’s eyes are closed.He’s resting.Or maybe he’s pretending to be asleep, so he doesn’t have to deal with all of us looking at him while he’s at his most vulnerable.

We stare at the man who’s loomed so large in all our lives.

“Is he ...?”Zach begins to ask.

“Breathing, dude.”I gesture at the monitors, the steady beep of the heart rate, the slow rise and fall of his chest; every sign that he’s still alive.

“What the hell happened?”

The housekeeper and his private butler are outside, but they couldn’t tell us much.A doctor walks in, a few moments later.

“Mr.Knight experienced what we believe was a hypertensive crisis.His blood pressure spiked to dangerous levels, and it caused acute symptoms, like vomiting, confusion, and chest pain.”

The words settle over us, like a suffocating blanket.I can’t breathe.I can’t process what this means, because him?That old man lying in bed looking helpless, is something my brain was never prepared for.