Black Widow: Pale Little Spider (2002 series) #1

In Moscow, two police detectives, Val Dobrova (a woman) and Maks Golitsyn (a man) arrive at a sex club called Fabrika to check reports of a murder on the premises. They find a masked corpse chained to a huge cross in a torture chamber. They remove the mask to find a bullet hole in the corpse’s forehead. They also learn he was a lieutenant colonel in the GRU and so they make phone call to GRU headquarters…

...where Yelena Belova sits moping in the shower because she did not score higher than Natasha Romanova on the stress-position exam. Her friend Dr. Lika Medvedev tells her to deal with it and get dressed because she has been summoned by the Director to the Red Room. When she arrives in the General’s office she is told that the murdered man was her trainer, mentor, and father figure, Lt. Col. Pyotr Starkovsky and Yelena cannot believe Starkovsky was a regular in such a place. The General adds that her top secret file was missing from Starkovsky’s office. He concludes by activating her as Black Widow and putting her in charge of the investigation into Lt. Col. Starkovsky’s murder….

So Yelena and Lika turn up at Starkovsky’s autopsy to take the case away from Detectives Golitsyn and Dobrova as well as having Lika continue the autopsy. Yelena is upset at the sight of Starkovsky and heads out into the hall. Golitsyn follows her and berates her for taking over the investigation. She kicks him in the stomach (without turning to face him) and yells back that Lt. Col. Pyotr Starkovsky was a better man than he will ever be and she will do anything to honor his memory….

Yelena, in her Black Widow outfit, goes to the Fabrika club to be greeted by a red-haired dominatrix named Nikki, who sizes her up as a newcomer who is shocked at what she sees. Nikki calls Yelena a pale little spider, which startles her. Her sock leads to a blow to Nikki’s refusal to tell what she meant by her remark unless Yelena behaves. Nikki takes Yelena to a room, denying her claim that she is not interested in the club’s business. Nikki invites her to open the door and she finds a dungeon with a man chained to a cross like Lt. Col. Pyotr Starkovsky, being beaten by a woman dressed like Yelena is, as Nikki calls her “Black Widow….”