Page 67 of Lash

Nicolae grins. "A lot has happened since I got on the plane." He rubs the back of his head, feeling the fuzz there. "I will fill you all in at a more appropriate time, when we are all together, as Solomon has said. But what you must know for now is that my name is Nicolae Dragos. Lash was a…a persona, I suppose."

No one speaks for a moment or two—they all seem stunned.

"Nicolae Dragos," says the man named Kane.

He is not especially tall, around six feet, but monstrously muscular, wider than two of me across the shoulders and chest, with arms and legs like tree trunks, his hair cropped on the sides and tied back in a long ponytail. He wears a black-and-white checkered scarf around his neck, the kind of thing men from Middle Eastern countries wear—at least, on the news I have seen.

"It's a good name, brother," Kane says. "Nice to finally meet the real you. Cut looks good, too."

Nicolae grins at me. "See? You did a wonderful job."

I blush, shrugging. “It was nothing. You told me what to do,” I say in Croatian.

Rev looks from me to Nicolae. “Who's she? And what language is that?"

"She is Tatiana Juric, daughter of the man who hijacked my flight—I worked for him, many, many years ago. She is Croatian. And we are together."

Rev juts his chin in the direction of our joined hands. "Figured. Glad for you, brother."

Kane frowns. “Her dad gonna come lookin' for her?"

Nicolae shrugs. "I do not think so." He looks at me.

"I should call him soon," I say in English. "I am upset with him right now, but he is my father and I love him, and he will be worried. We did sort of disappear from Zagreb."

Solomon claps his hands. "Okay, gang. Introductions have been made, environmental protests have been conducted, and reunions had. Let’s get this shitshow on the road. I'm not sure if we're rescuing Inez from Mercado or the other way around, but either way, I'm not leaving her with him any longer. Lorenzo, this is your show, bro. Take us in."

Lorenzo rolls his injured shoulder, wincing, and then nods. "We're about nine or so hours from his compound. Last intel I had on his operations there, he retained somewhere between twenty and thirty men on-site—hard, bad men, ex-military, and mostly special forces. They are heavily armed and well-trained, and their orders are to shoot on sight anyone who has not received clearance from Mercado himself. He can field another thirty or forty men from a nearby village, perhaps twenty minutes response time." He pauses, thinking. "His estate is walled all the way around, topped with razor wire, patrolled, and alarmed with state-of-the-art security."

"Fuckin' lovely," Kane says. "This'll be a real fun fuckin' party."

"Indeed," Lorenzo answers. "It is a fortress. Ingress will be difficult at best. We will need to come up with a plan before we attempt anything, or we will only get ourselves slaughtered."

"So we're ten people against potentially as many as seventy?" Saxon says. "Fuck, man. We don't need a plan, we need a fuckin' Apache."

I raise my hand. "I do not know if you should count me. I am not trained like the rest of you."

Nicolae glances at me. "You cannot sit this one out, Lovely One. I will do everything I can to make sure you are safe, but once we have Inez, we will have to exfil and bug out very swiftly."

I frown at him. "What is 'exfil' and 'bug out'?"

"Oh. Military terms. Exfil means get out of the combat zone, and bug out means get away, as in go home."

I let out a shuddery breath. "I will do what is needed, Nico. But I am afraid."

The big man, Chance—seven feet tall and as broad and dense with muscle as Kane—gives me a reassuring smile. "Sweetheart, we're all hardened combat vets, and even we get scared. We'll take care of you."

Scarlett comes up beside me and slings an arm through mine. "I got you, chica. You and me will fuck up some thugs. If you can gut a rapey motherfucker with a knife, you can pop a few in the fuckin' skulls.”

I sigh and shake my head. "I sell clothing. My father is the popper of skulls, not me."

She grins. "Well, chica, you do what you gotta do. But I'll be with you the whole time."

Solomon meets my eyes. "If Scarla says she's got you, you're safe as houses, honey."

I frown at her. "Scarla?"

She shrugs. "Nickname." She touches the long, nasty-looking scar running down the side of her face, a near mirror to the one on Solomon's brother Saxon's face.