Chapter1

On our wedding day, he hung my ex-fiancé’s head at the church door.

Guests screamed and fled, but he took my hand and said, “A traitor like him didn’t deserve to live.”

I thought I’d married my true kind.

He spoiled me for three years—diamonds, yachts, private islands. If I glanced at something, it appeared in our bedroom the next morning.

Until my birthday, when the private investigator sent me an address—

A house with my birthday as the passcode, stuffed with my cousin’s photos, her clothes, Polaroids of them having breakfast in each other’s arms.

That night, he came with a cake and a diamond box. “Happy birthday.”

I said: “The only gift I want—is her dead. By your hand.”

His smile froze.

In that moment, I realized three years of devotion had all been an act.

And he never knew—the women of the Corsica family aren’t born to be caged birds.

We’re born to take revenge.

……

On my wedding day, my husband hung my fiancé's head from the church door.

Christopher's blood dripped down the cross atop the church spire, but Logan MacKetti didn't spare it a single glance. He walked straight to my side.

"That kind of traitor, Elvira—he wasn't even worthy of tying your shoes."

The guests screamed and ran for the exits. The priest collapsed beside the altar.

I stared at that severed head and slowly began to smile.

Logan smiled too. He said we were the same kind of people.

So we got married right there in that church, still reeking of blood.

After the wedding, Logan treated me like a queen.

Diamonds, yachts, private islands—anything I so much as glanced at appeared in my bedroom the next day.

Every newspaper in New York said the new Mrs. MacKetti was the luckiest woman in the world.

Until my birthday.

The private investigator I'd hired sent me an address and a string of numbers.

He said, "Ma'am, you'd better see this for yourself."

The place was on the north side of Long Island, looked like an ordinary vacation home.

I used the code to unlock the door. Inside, everything belonged to Mia.

Giant photographs of her hung on the living room walls. Her dresses stuffed the bedroom closets. Her skincare products lined the bathroom counter.

In the desk drawer, I found a stack of Polaroids. In them, Logan had his arm around her waist. The two of them eating breakfast on the balcony, smiling so bright it hurt to look at.

I photographed every single picture.

When I got home that evening, Logan was already waiting for me.

Candles flickered in the dining room. A three-tiered cake sat on the table.

"Happy birthday, my queen."

He walked over to kiss me, holding a velvet box in his hand.

I guessed it was a ring. Or a necklace.

I didn't let him touch me.

"I went to that house up north today," I said.

His hand froze mid-air.

"The code was my birthday. Inside was full of Mia's photos and her clothes." I pulled out the printed photos from my bag and threw them in his face.

The photos scattered across the floor. The expression on Logan's face changed. That tender smile vanished.

"Elvira," he said, "let me explain. Mia sometimes helps me handle business matters. She needs a place to change clothes, to rest occasionally. Those photos—she took them herself. I had no idea."

"Oh really?"

I pulled out my phone and opened an encrypted social app. Everyone in the underworld used it.

I created a new account, named it "Mrs. MacKetti's Birthday Gift."

Then I uploaded all the photos I'd taken today, selected nine, and hit publish.

Logan grabbed the phone, staring at the screen as comments flooded in. His face darkened, and he immediately stepped aside to make a call.

"Delete the post immediately! Find out who posted it! Shut down every account that shares it! I want this gone before tonight!"

He hung up and came back, trying to take my hand.

"Elvira, there's nothing between Mia and me. She's your cousin. I look after her because of you. Trust me."

I yanked my hand away.

"Three years ago, Christopher betrayed me, and you killed him. I thought you were different from everyone else." I looked into his eyes. "Turns out what? You've been playing me for a fool. Logan, is it that you can't bear to touch Mia?"

He opened his mouth but no words came out.

"Because she's Mia?" I stepped closer. "Or because you've fallen in love with her?"

Logan fell silent. He looked at me, something indecipherable in his eyes.

Watching him like this, the last trace of warmth in my heart slowly died.

So everything he'd done all these years was nothing but a charade.

And all that devotion—just an act.

"Today's my birthday," I said. "You know what I want as a gift?"

He let out a breath of relief, as if he thought this was over. That tender smile returned to his face.

"Name it. Anything."

"Kill Mia for me."

The smile froze on Logan's face.

"Elvira, stop joking."

He tried to touch my shoulder. I slapped his hand away.

"You think I'm joking?"

I pointed at the phone screen, where new comments kept popping up.

"Look carefully. Does this look like a joke?"

I opened the latest comments. Someone had already dug up a necklace Mia wore last year—the exact same style as the one Logan had given me.

"Right now all of New York is watching us become a laughingstock," I said. "Either you kill her and prove you choose me. Or..."

"Or what?" Logan's voice turned cold.

I smiled.

"Or I'll do it myself. Don't forget—my name is Corsica."

"You know what the first thing I learned growing up was?"

He said nothing.

I leaned in close, enunciating each word.

"How to make people who betray me disappear."