Icarus Laughed Novels & Stories

At the wedding banquet, my fiancé arrived late with his first love in a best man's outfit, while the groom's suit was thrown on the sofa in a mess. "Quentin, today is our wedding..." "Natalie!" Quentin interrupted me sharply, his eyes full of warnings. "I think you should know what to say and what not to say. Be accommodating and don't make me hate you." I laughed bitterly. Just because Quentin's first love lost her memory, everyone was playing a game of finding memories with her, so we had to hide it from her and coax her, and not overwhelm her. In order to comfort me, Quentin came forward and hugged me, and whispered in my ear, "Nat, you can understand me, right?" I nodded to show my understanding, turned around, and took the hand of the real best man to join in holy matrimony. Later, when I was shopping in the mall while pregnat, he stopped me with tears in his eyes: "Nat, we were all acting, weren't we? How did you get pregnant?"

I suffer from a hereditary form of amnesia. By the time I found out, I had only seven days left. On the first day, I found my boyfriend had fallen for my younger twin sister. With a bitter smile, I suggested we break up. On the second day, my most treasured Lego set was smashed by my sister. Everyone laughed at me, saying I was disgraceful, unworthy of being a daughter of the Fleming family. On the fourth day, I forgot that my sister was allergic to mangoes. She ended up in the hospital, and my parents glared at me with resentment. Even my ex-boyfriend accused me of being heartless. On the seventh day, I woke up in a hospital bed to see my father walking in with a stern expression. He demanded that I quit my job and devote myself entirely to taking care of the family, as nothing more than a housekeeper. But I only looked at them in confusion and asked softly, “Who are you?” When they realized I had truly lost my memory, they lost their minds.

The night before my victory gala, I heard my husband, Matteo Bellandi, promise my credit to his mistress. "Vivian, I'll put Sofia's project credit under your name. Consider it an early second-birthday gift for our son." Vivian laughed softly. "Will Sofia agree to that?" Matteo sounded bored. "She has the title of Mrs. Bellandi. That's enough." I thought I had misheard him. But the next night, my award was given to Vivian, and Matteo personally walked her onto the stage. "Young talent needs room to grow," he told the room. "From now on, Vivian will lead this project." The gala went silent. Everyone tried not to look at me. I sat in the corner Vivian had arranged for me and finally understood. Matteo had kept the title for me, then given the credit, the money, and his future to his mistress and their son. Fine. I left the ballroom without looking back. I was done being Mrs. Bellandi. From now on, I was Sofia Valenti again, the princess of Chicago’s most feared family.

Kaliya Ortiz is the illegitimate daughter of the Reyes family who handles businesses around the country. Treated like a nobody in her own family she grew up to be a quiet woman, always hidden in plain sight. Caleb Cruz is the man behind the DY group that dominated the country’s economy. A known business figure and a bachelor on top of that. Many women attempted to make him theirs but the unmoving Caleb wasn’t easy to seduce. Fate somehow seemed to toy the two and decided to play Cupid. "Will you marry me?” "What can you give me then?" She frowned, seemingly lost in thought and then said, "I can give you money." "I'm not in need of money." "Then a house?" "I already have one." "A beautiful wife." He laughed but wasn't convinced. "That certainly is a good catch but..." he trailed off. "It's tempting but no." The woman stared at him, unsmiling. "Then my body?" His smile didn't fade. "Do you want to give it to me?" An encounter leads them to a tangle of messes and to contracts and maybe… towards love.

Ava Sinclair died pregnant, betrayed by the two people she trusted most, her husband and her best friend. When she opens her eyes again, she’s twenty six again and back in the moment before her life fell apart. This time, she refuses to walk into the same trap. She rejects marrying her boyfriend Luca and opted for an arranged marriage with Damien Moretti Ava knows Damien isn’t marrying her for love. He’s marrying her because it’s his duty , He warns her not to expect affection from him but she told him she'll make him fall in love with her. He laughed it off. But the more he pushes her away, the more Damien starts to crumble, revealing a possessive, caring man. “You don’t have to love me,” Ava said to him softly, but I'll love you. And when the truth behind her past life’s betrayal resurfaces, Ava realizes fate isn’t done with her yet… and neither is her marriage to Damien Moretti.

In the two years after Bradley Vaughn's so-called "memory loss," we divorced seven times—all to keep his childhood crush Vivian Monroe happy. Number eight? Because Vivian got pregnant. "You can't have kids anyway. Once Vivian has the baby, we'll get back together. You can raise the kid." That was his usual ice-cold line as he slid the papers across the table. That night, he kicked me out—said Vivian got nauseous just seeing me. I moved into another house. Alone. In the rain. Even after I landed in the ER from a near assault, he didn't bother asking if I was okay. Then one day, I spotted him at a clinic with Vivian. He rubbed her belly and laughed, "So what if she finds out I faked the amnesia? She can't live without me. Toss her a bone, she'll come crawling." I looked away, steady. Then my phone buzzed. [How did your checkup go?]

"Kylie, this year's annual bonus is evaluated based on two factors: performance and peer reviews. "Since your team never participates in company social events, your coworkers all gave you poor ratings. That's why this is your year-end bonus." Around me, the male employees were receiving bonuses in the tens of thousands. And yet, the women I led—developers who had worked for over ten years and built every core system the company relied on—each received nothing more than a coffee gift card and a mug engraved with the company logo. I laughed out loud. Then I turned and walked into my office and submitted resignation requests for the entire technical team. The manager, Preston Alec, sneered. "Good riddance. AI can replace women like you who only know how to have children." A few days later, the very people who had mocked me were standing in front of me, begging me to come back. I smiled in return. "AI conquers everything, doesn't it?"

Three hours after my engagement banquet ended, I was stuffed into a burlap sack and thrown straight into the ocean. By the time deep-sea divers found me, my body had swollen into something grotesque and barely recognizable. The police called my fiancé right away to come identify the remains, but he could not have sounded less interested. "So, she's dead. So what? I'll show up at the funeral when the time comes." Left with no choice, the police dialed the second starred contact in my phone. It was my own brother. He laughed so hard that he doubled over. "Dead? Last I checked, it's not April Fools'. Not a funny joke. And do me a favor. Tell Selene Corvin I couldn't care less about her corpse. Throw it back in the ocean to feed the fish. I don't care." He did not know that I did end up as fish food for a very long time. The moment my remains appeared on that massive screen, however, both my fiancé and my brother lost their minds.

Right after I put the invoice of an eighty-thousand-dollar gold necklace into my bag, my Instagram went wild. A woman calling herself “Future In-law” showed a picture of a ring with a diamond the size of a pigeon egg. It was worth two million dollars. [It’s our first meeting, but my future in-law insisted on giving me this. I couldn’t say no.] The next second, the shop attendant handed me a receipt saying that I owed them two million dollars. “The lady from earlier charged you for her daughter’s two-million-dollar diamond ring. She said that you’re her future in-law, so you have to be nice to her too.” I scowled. “Do you have security footage? I’d like to find her.” The shop attendant shrugged and appeared dismissive. “Sorry, but the security camera broke down today. It’s written clearly on the receipt. You can’t refuse to pay.” Exasperated, I laughed, grabbed the unsigned receipt, and called the police. “Hello, officers. I just got scammed out of two million dollars at a jewelry shop.”

The enemies of my adopted sister's parents mistook me for her and kidnapped me. Before the rogues killed me, they gave me three phone calls for help. If anyone was willing to give me three hundred dollars, I could live. For the first call, I dialed my father. Father didn't listen to a word I said. He immediately unleashed a torrent of curses. "Where the hell are you? Get your ass back home right now for your sister's birthday!" For the second call, I dialed my brother. My brother listened silently to my plea for help, then hung up with a cold snort. "You're never around when the pack needs you. Who's going to fall for this act now?" For the third call, I dialed my fiancé. He didn't even answer. When I called again, I'd been blocked. The rogue wolf laughed at me. "Looks like being the eldest daughter of the Ashwood family doesn't mean much, does it?" After he tortured me to death, he stuffed my body into a suitcase and threw it in the river.