Romanoff later drew an assignment working in the Stark Industries Legal Department under the pseudonym of Natalie Rushman. The ulterior motive was for her to keep an eye on Tony Stark after he signed his company over to Pepper Potts. In reality, Romanoff had been assigned to assess whether he was suitable for a plan to bring together a group of people with unparalleled talents. Stark ran a search on her and discovered that she was fluent in French, Russian, Latin; and had done some modeling in Japan at some point. Romanoff became Tony's new assistant while he was in Monaco, then when she flirted with him at his birthday party he started to get suspicious about where she had come from.