She leaned back, crossing her legs on the armrest. "So... Felicia, then?"
He didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
"My, my," Natasha said, a slow smirk spreading across her face. "Didn't think you were the loyal type. Especially with that habit of... eating your maids."
Michael let out a quiet laugh as he stepped away, heading toward the kitchen. "My maids, my rules. And they seem to like it just fine."
Natasha arched a brow. "Oh? And what happens when one of them decides to bite back harder than expected?"
He glanced over his shoulder with a crooked grin. "Then I make sure they never want to leave."
Natasha chuckled, standing up and brushing off her suit. "Careful, Michael. Keep talking like that and even I might start thinking you're fun."
He raised his glass of water in a mock toast. "Dangerous and fun. That's the whole package, remember?"
"Mm. Until someone gets burned."
Michael smirked. "Let's just hope they're fireproof."
Natasha didn't move immediately. She just watched him for a beat, the smirk on her lips fading into something cooler. "So…" she said, voice smooth, "did you get it?"
Michael raised an eyebrow, still sipping from his glass. "Get what?"
"The Super Soldier Serum," she clarified, folding her arms. "Don't play dumb. You were poking around Hammerhead's storage facilities. That doesn't happen by accident."
Michael chuckled—low, dry, amused. "And here I thought all that flirting was because you missed me."
Her gaze narrowed. "So all that charm was just another distraction?"
He walked past her slowly, the tension between them subtle but electric. "You tell me," he said, setting the glass down with a soft clink. "You're the one who sat on my lap, asked if I wanted it right now."
Natasha ignored the deflection. "Michael," she said, sharper now. "Did you find the serum?"
He finally stopped, leaning on the kitchen counter, facing her. "No. Not yet."
"But you're close."
Michael didn't respond with words. He just smiled.
After leaving Felicia's apartment, he made a quiet detour. Just an quick one—he made sure of that. A quick visit to one of Hammerhead's former fronts, a seemingly abandoned property in the Narrows, confirmed what he'd suspected.
Empty. Cleaned out.
No serum. No files. No traces of continued experimentation.
Which could only mean one thing—if Hammerhead had anything left of the Super Soldier Serum project, it wasn't here. There had to be another lab. A hidden one. Somewhere off-books, buried deeper than the rest.
For now, though, he shelved the thought. There were other matters to handle first.
Only then Michael returned home and found this hot widow at his home.
"Pity," he mused aloud, slipping off his jacket. "If I were anyone else, I might have missed something. But not him. He's smarter than that."
"So, you are close," Natasha said, arms crossed, eyeing him with suspicion and something else—amusement, maybe.
Michael smirked as he looked her over, casually. "By the way… is your maid outfit at the dry cleaner's, or are you saving it for a special night?"
Natasha rolled her eyes, unfazed. "I'm your secretary, not your maid. So, I don't need any maid outfit"
"Secretary, maid…" He shrugged. "As long as you're still mine."
She shook her head, clearly done with the banter—for now.
He walked past her and opened a side cabinet. A stack of files—thick, heavy, and marked with the Crimson Talons' insignia—hit the table with a dull thud.
"You need to go through these. All of them."
Natasha raised an eyebrow as she looked at the sheer volume. "This is enough paperwork to bury me."
"You wanted to be close," Michael said, smirking. "Congratulations. You're now in charge of sorting every name, location, and shipment they've moved in the last year."
She groaned as she sat down, cracking her neck. "So much for espionage. This is glorified data entry."
"I'll make it up to you," Michael said as he turned away, his voice dry.
Then he added, almost too casually, "I'll give you something not even SHIELD could."
Natasha's hand froze on the file. Her casual demeanor shifted, sharp eyes narrowing.
"What do you mean by that?" she asked slowly.
Michael didn't turn around as he spoke. "Dreykov is alive. And the Red Room… is still running."
The silence that followed was immediate and ice-cold.
"I'm sure SHIELD's higher-ups know," Michael continued. "They just haven't told you. Maybe they don't trust you. Maybe they think it's better you keep believing the lies."
He left the room, leaving the weight of his words behind like a knife in the table.
Natasha stood frozen for a moment, her mind racing.
His voice…
It wasn't mocking. It wasn't even smug.
Just... resigned. Like someone who had accepted too much truth.
She swallowed hard, the old ghosts stirring inside her.
Dreykov. The Red Room.
"They said he was dead…" she muttered to herself. "That it was over."
She sank onto the couch, staring blankly at the TV that played in the background, her focus miles away.
"I have to find out for myself," she whispered.
Then she turned her eyes to the massive stack of Crimson Talon files beside her.
"I guess this is my price now," she said bitterly, flipping the first page open.
Meanwhile, Michael stood in his private chamber, hands behind his back as he looked out the reinforced window. A slight smirk tugged at the edge of his lips.
These files were meaningless.
A maze with no exit. A way to keep Natasha busy—and nearby.
Because while she read, the real cleansing had already begun.
Out there, his new butler—once known as Taskmaster, now reconditioned as the Abyss Knight—was tearing through the Crimson Talons, one base at a time. No negotiations. No survivors.
Soon, the files would be outdated.
Soon, there would be nothing left for Natasha to find… but bodies.
And when the last of them fell—he would have time.
Time to hunt the lab.
Time to expose Dreykov.
Time to finish what SHIELD never could.
"Hmm… speaking of butlers," Michael muttered to himself, rubbing his chin thoughtfully as he leaned back into the velvet-lined armchair. "Isn't there still the Winter Soldier too?"
He tapped the armrest lightly, eyes narrowing as his mind pieced through fragmented intel.
"The Soviet program—those six other Winter Soldiers were frozen… until the man who started the Civil War killed them all."
His gaze drifted to the wall where a quiet projection played old footage of the Siberian facility. Bodies. Ice. Silence.
"Except for Bucky," Michael said softly, eyes glinting. "Because he wasn't in the cryo chamber at the time."
"but if i go now, I can get all of them" Michael smiled as he thought of this.
*******
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