Natasha had been trained in many things she’d never chosen.

Espionage. Combat. Seventeen different ways to kill someone with a paperclip. The Red Room had made sure she was a weapon first, a person second. And while she’d learned to use those skills for good as an hero—had found purpose in protecting people instead of eliminating them—there was always that weight. That knowledge that none of it had been her choice.

Except ballet.

Ballet had been part of the training, yes. The Red Room had strict standards—every Widow learned to move with grace, precision, control. To use their bodies as instruments of deception and death, wrapped in elegance.

But somewhere in those brutal hours at the barre, Natasha had found something the Red Room hadn’t intended to give her.

Freedom.

There was something about dance that let her breathe. The way her body could flow with music instead of against an opponent. The way movement could be beautiful instead of lethal. The way she could express something without words, without violence, without the constant calculation of survival.

After the team had saved the world enough times that the world didn’t need saving quite as urgently, Natasha had made a decision.

She’d opened a dance studio.

It had started small. One room. A handful of classes. Just Natasha and a ballet barre and students who had no idea they were learning from one of the world’s most dangerous women.

Now, five years later, Romanoff Dance Academy was one of the most respected studios in New York. Students came from all over—children taking their first wobbly steps in tiny ballet slippers, teenagers with dreams of Juilliard, adults rediscovering movement after years away. Natasha had hired other instructors, expanded to multiple studios, added contemporary and jazz and even some competition teams.

Because this—watching her students discover what dance could be—this was something she’d chosen.

Now she stood in Studio A, choreography notebook open on the piano, pencil tucked behind her ear, watching her students filter in. The Tuesday regulars. Some had been with her for a while. Some were newer.

Natasha smiled—small, genuine—and caught the eye of one of her students who waved enthusiastically. She waved back.

This was hers. This choice. This life.