At the Avengers Initiative, Nick Fury calls a small team to assemble in the briefing room. Captain America, Black Widow, the Winter Soldier, and Sam Wilson, all Dominants, as well as Hawkeye a bonded sub, are assembled around the table before him. Fury shows them a file SHIELD had compiled on the Volkov Bratva enforcer known as Nikita. Natasha has had cause to cross paths with Nikita before and finds her impressive, warning the team that the enforcer is almost as good as she is herself. They review the information in the SHIELD file which consists only her time in the Bratva and identifies some of her instructors. Like the Widow, her origins are shrouded in mystery. Steve finds himself staring at surveillance photos from several years ago showing a frighteningly young woman with honey gold hair and dark blue eyes. He is quietly dismayed to learn that this young submissive has worn the collar of a mob boss for 12 years. Fury informs the team that Nikita has reached out to Natasha, offering information on a HYDRA base, from which she had recently escaped, in exchange for safe haven. Apparently Demyan Volkov has died of a heart attack recently, SHIELD suspects he was poisoned. His eldest son, Sergei Volkov, the new head of the Volkov Bratva, sold Nikita to HYDRA when she refused his sexual advances. She has offered her services to SHIELD in exchange for her helping to destroy the HYDRA base and retrieve all possible intel. The team is to meet Nikita at the club that serves as the headquarters for the Volkov Bratva.
When the Avengers team arrives at the agreed meeting place, they enter to find at least a dozen bodies scattered about the floor, Nikita sitting in a chair with her foot resting on Sergei Volkov's severed head, sharpening a knife. They can smell that the room has been doused in an accelerant. "Делаем ли мы вход или выход?" asks Natasha.
"Кто говорит, что я не могу сделать так?" Nikita returns. She stands, returning her knife to her boot. Nikita walks over to the Avengers, removing her collar. She pulls a small bottle out of one of the pockets of her BDU pants, pours the contents over the collar, lighting it on fire, then tossing it into the middle of the room. The building goes up in flames as they leave. "What the hell was that?" exclaims Barton.
"The consequences of betrayal," replies Nikita with a hard look in her eyes. Let them think this an act of cold calculation. She knows that the mask she wears as her face lets nothing show of the grief and rage vented here. Let them think lighting the pyre with her collar an act of defiance rather than an offering to the shade of the only person she has ever trusted. Let them think the destruction of the club a cold warning rather than her version of a viking funeral.