Icarus Laughed Novels & Stories

After my husband topped the wealth rankings, he hired his first love as his personal housekeeper at a high salary. “Quincy, you hail from humble beginnings. I don’t want you embarrassing me in high society, so I specifically brought in Vivian to teach you the rules. From now on, everything you do must be reported to her for approval.” From that moment on, in public, I was the glamorous Mrs. Lane. However, behind closed doors, to even enjoy simple marital moments with my husband I had to write a thousand-word application seeking Vivian’s approval. Then, my adoptive father had a heart attack. I dropped to my knees, begging her to transfer me five hundred thousand dollars. She laughed coldly. “What kind of surgery costs half a million? Stop making excuses to pad your family’s finances.” “This isn’t a small sum. Write a 10,000-word application, and this time it’s denied.” Rage coursed through me, my body trembling uncontrollably as I spun toward Tyler and fell to my knees, begging him to save my father’s life. There wasn’t even a flicker of emotion on his face. “Vivian did nothing wrong. I know you’re still clinging to your old poor habits even after getting rich, but my money doesn’t grow on trees.” “This time, your father’s medical treatment will be put on hold as a lesson. Next time, don’t blame me if he’s kicked out of the VIP ward.” In the end, my adoptive father died on the operating table due to the delay in treatment. Completely disheartened, I finally asked Tyler for a divorce.

My mother-in-law was somehow allergic to me. As long as I was in the house, her skin would break out in rashes, and she would struggle to breathe. The hospital could not find any specific allergen. They said it might be something to do with my scent. To give his mother some relief, my husband Keith asked me to stay in a hotel every weekend. I quietly packed away everything that was mine. I even stopped wearing my favorite perfume just so I could stay home for one extra day. However, her condition only grew worse. The days I was allowed to be home dropped from five days a week to three, and eventually to just one. I never complained. I only hoped she would get better soon. One day, I left work early to pick up a document from home. I heard laughter from inside the house. "Mom, your trick really works! Every time you cough, my brother kicks that woman out." It was Keith's god-sister Caroline, who had studied abroad. My mother-in-law laughed smugly. "Caroline, you're the best. You can cook, and you give great massages. You're nothing like that useless block of wood who's always in the way. "Keith, hurry up and marry Caroline already. Get rid of that woman!" Keith's voice was full of indulgence. "Mom, don't say things like that. Caroline, look at the perfume I bought you. You've worked hard lately." All strength left my body as I stood frozen at the door.

Mia Vitiello, the princess of the mafia don Luca Vitiello and a famous pediatrician. She would never have thought that she would be kidnapped just an hour before her marriage and would be saved by the man she hates. She was supposed to marry Alessandro, the Russian mafia don. But fate has other plans for this sweet and hot mafia princess. Alesso ditches her on the Altar to be kidnapped by his enemies. Reed Carter, who is known as the King of Darkness, and whom Mia hates, is the man who would come to her rescue. The incidents during her captivity disturb her deeply. What will Reed do to make the mafia princess fall in love with a heartless man like him? Will he be able to love her back? ....... "Mia? Are you alright?" he asked her, trying to ignore the fact thaf she is only wearing a shirt, his shirt. Mia walked inside the room and closed the door after her. "I couldn't sleep" she confessed softly. Reed patted the place on the bed beside him. She crawled onto the bed and he tucked her under the blankets beside him. She rested her head on his chest and he pulled her closer to him, inhaling her sweet feminine scent. "You are not supposed to come here at this hour" he reminded her. Mia laughed at his remark. "We have been doing this for over a month now" she reminded him. Reed sighed heavily. "That was different" he said quietly. She knows she is to marry Alesso soon. She was ready to marry him before all of this happened. But now, she is questioning everything. "Is it so wrong to sleep another night with you?" She asked. ......... What happens if Alessandro comes back to claim his fiancee?

The day my birth parents found me, the reunion banquet they threw turned into their funeral. My parents and their adopted daughter, Leila, died of food poisoning that night. The only one who survived was my older brother, Alpha Kian. He didn’t like sweets, so he never touched the cake. The cake that I handed to them myself. “So you want to take Leila’s place. “You’re just jealous because she got all our love! “She was the only one who ever accepted you, and you still killed her!” Those were Kian’s exact words as he shouted at me right outside the hospital room. From that day on, I became a sinner. To make up for it, I barely slept four hours a night and worked five jobs just to buy back the villa the rival pack seized during the chaos. However, the day I finally saved up enough, I saw my dead parents throwing a birthday party for Leila in that very villa. Kian stood among them, looking at her with a warmth I didn’t recognize. My mother said, “Isn’t today also Lily’s birthday? It’s been eight years. Maybe it’s time to forgive her.” However, Kian didn’t hesitate to refuse. “No. Even though Leila sniffed out the wolfsbane and saved you, we agreed that Lily gets ten years. “We can’t risk her ever trying to poison Leila again. Not even a day less.” I clutched the diagnosis paper from the clinic tightly and laughed through my tears. I knew I wouldn’t get to ten years. I was already dying.

At the medical summit, my husband's precious first love thought the old professor's clothes were too shabby for such a grand occasion. So she dropped his conference badge into the trash. The old man shook with fury and threatened to pull his company's partnership with us on the spot. In my last life, I slapped her across the face right there, then bowed and scraped until the professor forgave us, and that was the only thing that saved our company. My husband, meanwhile, was heartbroken that his darling had been hit, and took her home to comfort her. Later, our company rode the professor's patented miracle drug all the way to its IPO. On the day of the celebration, indecent videos made with my face swapped via AI rolled continuously across the giant screen. And in front of a hall full of sneering guests, my husband pulled his first love tight against his chest. "You love slapping people in public, don't you? Today you get to taste what it feels like to be finished." I ran out of the hotel, sick with shame, and a runaway truck flattened me into the pavement. Then he turned around, threw the wedding of the century for his golden girl, and drove my parents into the street to die alone in the cold. When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the exact second she tossed that badge into the trash. This time, I didn't fly into a rage to stop her. Instead I curled my arm sweetly through my husband's and laughed louder than anyone in the room. "Babe, Tiffany's got such a sharp eye. Security should've thrown this ragged beggar out ages ago."

The HR manager slid a severance agreement across the table and said coldly, "You're fired." I froze. "Why?" Just one week ago, my boss had praised me in the company meeting and called me one of the team's most valuable people. The HR manager shrugged. "Ms. Lyttle, you're already 35. You don't have the energy of younger employees anymore, and you're not what you used to be. You no longer fit the company's future." I joined this company when I was 29. Over the past six years, I wrote countless lines of code and worked through more sleepless nights than I could remember. Every time the company faced a major system failure, I led the emergency response and saved it from catastrophic losses. And now they were telling me I was too old and too slow. I laughed in disbelief. "So you've already copied all my experience and skills into an AI, haven't you?" The HR manager paused for a moment before answering confidently, "AI never gets tired, never takes time off, and never asks for a raise. Once the company has an employee like that, why would we keep you?" I looked at her. "Are you sure the AI has learned everything I know?" She smiled. "Absolutely." The moment I heard that, I finally relaxed. Long ago, I had already hidden a trap inside my code to keep my skills from being copied. The moment their AI employee went live, the company would only have three days before everything fell apart.

At a company team-building dinner, my coworkers started a challenge. We had to call our husbands or boyfriends and compare how much money they sent us. The rules were simple. Whoever got the biggest transfer and the fastest answer won. As usual, I came in dead last. "Seraphina, don't take it personally. Mr. Brooks may not be very romantic, but at least he's rich." Everyone laughed and tried to smooth things over, carefully avoiding old wounds. Like how I had spent seven years helping Conrad build his business, yet he had never once brought up marriage. Like how Conrad had distributed company shares to the executive team, and I was the last person to find out. Or how, on the day I was diagnosed with stomach cancer, the only person sitting beside me in the hospital waiting for the test results was my best friend. I simply smiled and said nothing. Then my gaze landed on the new intern. She gripped her phone so tightly her knuckles had turned white, hesitation written all over her face. "I think I'll pass," she said quietly. "He's on a business trip. He's really busy." The mood in the room began to grow awkward. Trying to help her out, I leaned forward with a smile and tapped the speakerphone button as I dialed for her. I had expected the call to go unanswered. Instead, it was picked up instantly. The private dining room fell completely silent. Because the voice that came through the phone belonged to my quiet, unromantic boyfriend, Conrad, and his tone was impossibly gentle. "Babe, did you get the Valentine's Day surprise I sent you?"

As the only daughter of the Whitehaven Pack's Alpha, I had the right to choose my mate from among the heirs of our allied packs. Everyone expected me to choose Kieran Dante—after all, I’d spent years making a fool of myself chasing after him at every pack gathering. But instead, I chose Damon Thorne, the one they called cursed and weak. In my previous life, I did choose Kieran, and on the night of our bonding ceremony, I found him mating with my best friend Sera in the ceremonial preparation room. When my father found out and banished Sera from the pack, Kieran blamed me for ruining his happiness. He brought back a hundred she-wolves who looked exactly like her and forced me to watch as he bedded them one after another. The constant agony of the bond tore me apart from the inside, and when I finally grew too weak to endure it anymore, Kieran accused me of faking illness for attention. On the night I was dying, I crawled to his door begging for help, and he stepped over my body to go sleep with another woman. I died alone on the cold hallway floor while my mate laughed in the next room. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back before it all happened — with a second chance to change everything. This time, I decided to let Kieran and Sera have each other. What I didn't expect was that Kieran had also been reborn, and when he saw me choose Damon over him, he completely lost control.

"Sign this. We're done." Aaliyah Monroe thought she’d found love with a rising billionaire, Henry Smith—until he blindsided her with divorce papers on their fourth anniversary, revealing her twin sister, Aurora, as his true love. Betrayed and cast out, Aaliyah drowns her fury in a nightclub, where she meets Orrin Hayes, a billionaire mogul who falls for her instantly. He offers her a deal– “Aaliyah, I’m smitten. You’re fire, and I want to burn. Marry me.” She froze as her heart tripped. “What?” “Not for love, not yet,” he said with his eyes glinting. “A deal. You want revenge on Henry and Aurora? I’ve got the power to crush them. Marry me, and I’m yours—my money, my connections, my everything. We’ll make them beg.” She stared, the whiskey clouded her head but not her judgment. The idea was insane, but it lit a spark. Henry’s face on that stage and Aurora’s smirk—they deserved to fall. And Orrin? He was a weapon, wrapped in charm and danger. “You’re serious?” she asked, testing him. “Dead serious.” He took her hand into his, gently. “I’m half in love with you already. Say yes, and we’ll shake the world.” She laughed, the sound was shaky but real. “You’re crazy. But… okay. Yes.” Aaliyah agreed. But there was one thing she was yet to inform this charming yet mischievous Billionaire suggesting marriage to her– she's carrying her ex husband’s child. Will she successfully use him to climb the ladder and get her revenge despite having a child for her ex-husband? Or will a second chance in love surface?

My crippled sister, Monica Porter, jumped from the roof of the classroom building. The day before she died, she had just been fitted with the custom prosthetic legs I had paid for with ten years of savings. She was glowing, excited to finally stand up on her own. But my wife's best friend, a guy she said was just like a brother to her, locked Monica inside an empty art room. He smashed her new legs, forced her to crawl on the floor and lick paint clean to retrieve the broken parts, and recorded everything on video. And my wife, a judge, ultimately ruled that the case could not stand. "The video cannot confirm the time it was recorded and may represent consensual performance art between both parties," she said. Sandra Pauley's final judgment was simple. "The deceased had a history of depression. The school and the defendant bear no responsibility." I smiled and cooked her a full table of food. The next day, I hung the bully, Eric Hoyles, from the school's flagpole and livestreamed it to the entire internet. "Honey, remember how you said Monica had such pretty legs?" I raised a claw hammer and brought it down on his ankle. "If you don't hand over the video evidence right now, I'll hook out his Achilles tendon one strand at a time and let him learn what it feels like to crawl!" The wind passed through. His screaming broke apart in the air, mixing with the strained creaking of the flagpole until it sounded almost like music. The live chat went insane. Meanwhile, I laughed until my eyes filled with tears.