He looked at the oversized shirt I was wearing, then at the poisoned garment in my hands.

“You wore my clothes to tell me I am being murdered,” Aries said.

“I didn’t have time to change,” I said. “You would have put this on for the gala in ten minutes.”

Killian reached for the radio on his belt.

“Lock down the floor,” Killian ordered into the device.

Only static hissed in response.

Killian’s expression froze.

“Aries,” Killian said, his voice dropping an octave. “The security line is dead.”

Outside, the rain seemed to stop for a fraction of a second.

A tiny red dot appeared on the glass directly behind Aries’s head.

I opened my mouth to scream.

Before the sound could leave my throat, a blinding flash turned the Manhattan skyline white.

The sound that followed was deafening, a physical force that punched the air from my lungs.

The floor-to-ceiling glass windows shattered inward.

A wave of heat and razor-sharp shards erupted into the room.

The force of the blast threw me backward onto the hardwood floor.

My ears rang with a high-pitched, metallic whine.

Through the black smoke and the sudden rush of cold wind, I saw the dark silhouettes of men dropping from the roof on ropes.

A heavy weight slammed into my back, pinning me to the floor.

The scent of cedarwood, expensive wool, and metallic copper flooded my senses.

It was Aries.

He covered my body with his own, his broad frame acting as a shield against the rain of glass.

Shards pelted his leather jacket like hail.

“Stay down,” Aries hissed against my ear.

His voice was tight, strained by the physical toll of the deafening blast on his sensitive hearing.

Above us, the rhythmic pop of automatic gunfire tore through the smoke.

Killian was already firing back, his silhouette a solid shadow near the shattered window frame.