The Ghost [Marvel | Steve Rogers]

Chapter 37

"I've always been curious about you," he declared with a trace of a smile, "thought about trying to recruit you a few years back, but you're awfully hard to track down."

"That was rather the idea," she responded casually, keeping her voice neutral, even going so far as to rest her arm on the table, fingers toying absently with her rumpled napkin. Fury nodded, a trace of amusement glinting in his eye before it turned sharp.

"Someone managed to, it seems." She bristled as he stood, making his way back into the kitchen proper. But he had already moved past the topic of her blackmail, to no small surprise of Nadine's. She narrowed her eyes at him instinctively, knowing he wasn't likely to let it go that easily. But for the time being, he seemed completely uninterested in that. "You're good, Ryker. Very good. Hiding out in plain sight as a ballet mistress with a teenaged daughter? Even knowing what I do about the practices in that KGB facility you and Romanoff came from, I wouldn't have guessed you'd go with that cover." He paused, glancing to her shrewdly. "Never would've pegged you for a team player, either."

"Desperate times called for desperate measures," she countered, not looking away from him. Fury nodded stoically as he leaned back against the counter.

"That they do. They lead to strange allies. I never expected to be sitting at the same dinner table as The Ghost, that's for sure." Nadine nearly smirked in response to his wry smile, the corner of her lips twitching. "I always thought if I was ever going to encounter you, Ms. Ryker, that I'd be looking down the barrel of your gun." She smiled tightly, knowing the expression wouldn't reach her eyes. She wasn't terribly concerned. A small, huffing chuckle escaped the former director.

"Yes, well, the idea of killing for someone else's political expediency doesn't quite sit well with me, and yes," she added, noticing he was winding up to interject, "I know I've still done it anyway. I am aware of the hypocrisy. But I've made it my business to only go after those who are like me, who kill for hire. I don't do run-of-the-mill assassinations anymore. It's a perk of my reputation."

"And yet rumour had it that it was you who was going to be coming after me back before I died." Nadine couldn't help the amused smirk that curled her lips this time.

"That's only partially true. I won't deny that feelers were put out; I was approached. But I said no. I don't do political assassination."

"You took out that Argentinian diplomat a couple of years ago," he pointed out before taking a calm sip from the glass he held, a trace of a smirk hiding behind the rim. Nadine's grin turned into a scowl as her eyes narrowed on the former director.

"I didn't exactly have much of a choice on that one, but I suspect you know that already. Normally I wouldn't have accepted, but I wasn't put in a position where I could refuse it either. And on the subject of your assassination? If Pierce hadn't been power-tripping or even quite so impatient in sending in the Winter Soldier, it might very well have been me HYDRA contracted to go after you. Turns out it was ultimately them pulling my strings with the blackmail, after all—plus, I'm a lot more expensive." Fury nodded in concession, his dark, knowing eye lifting back to study her. Satisfaction hummed in her chest as a flicker of surprise flashed in his sharp gaze; he hadn't expected her to be so candid about being blackmailed.

"I'll admit, I never knew for sure. Obviously HYDRA played their cards close to the vest, and that included their use of you. I'd been wondering about it for quite a while, though. Some of your hits never did quite add up to your regular MO. Made me think you had someone else behind the wheel." She couldn't help but bristle again, the return to the subject of her blackmailing alone making her tetchy even if she was the one who brought it up. She knew he hadn't been finished with it yet.