King of Gluttony

Two feuding heirs forced into a nine-month collaboration

Maya Singh, chief brand officer of Singh Foods, is already drowning in a listeria crisis when her father drops a bombshell at a family dinner with the Laurents.

Two feuding heirs forced into a nine-month collaboration

Maya Singh, chief brand officer of Singh Foods, is already drowning in a listeria crisis when her father drops a bombshell at a family dinner with the Laurents. Singh Foods will collaborate with the Laurent Restaurant Group on a frozen foods line—and Maya and Sebastian Laurent, lifelong rivals who've competed over everything from grades to accolades since boarding school, will co-lead it. Sebastian, the Laurents' golden-boy chief marketing officer, is equally furious. Their families have been close for generations, but these two have spent decades trading insults, one-upping each other, and pretending the other barely exists. Now they have nine months to produce results—together. Maya vows to stay professional. Sebastian can't resist provoking her. Neither suspects how thoroughly this partnership will unravel them.

His father uses a guest's death to keep him in the boardroom

Behind Sebastian's effortless confidence lies a restlessness he can't name. He holds both an MBA and a culinary degree, but his father Michel flatly rejected his proposal to leave corporate life for the kitchen. Michel's weapon is a wound Sebastian can barely touch: three years ago, Sebastian oversaw a restaurant opening where a guest died of apparent anaphylactic shock. The coroner blamed peanut contamination. Sebastian was never certain his kitchen was responsible, but the sliver of doubt sent him spiraling—therapy, a drinking bender across Europe, a violent blackout in Prague that landed him in jail. Michel insists the boardroom is safer. Sebastian loathes marketing but can't defy his father when the memory of that night still triggers panic attacks at the sound of shattering glass.

A celebrity chef's collapse forces Sebastian into the kitchen

Their recruited celebrity chef, Derek Gardiner, gets a third DUI and enters rehab, leaving the collaboration without a face or recipe developer weeks after the public announcement. Every alternative chef Sebastian contacts refuses—frozen food feels beneath them. Maya proposes the unthinkable: Sebastian should do it himself. He has formal culinary training and intimate knowledge of the project. He resists, paralyzed by his Le Boudoir trauma. Maya doesn't know the full story, but she reads his hesitation as cowardice and says so with surgical precision—if he walks away without trying, he's not the man she thought he was. Sebastian agrees. He then privately negotiates a contract with his father: if the launch succeeds, he transitions from CMO to full-time professional chef. Michel signs, skeptical but cornered.