Read An Excerpt From 'Greedy' by Callie Kazumi

What would you do for a seat at the table? In this deliciously dark thriller set in Japan, a desperate gambling addict masquerades as the private chef to a reclusive billionaire with deadly taste—from the twisted mind behind Claire, Darling.

Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Greedy by Callie Kazumi, which releases on February 3rd 2026.

They will kill me soon, Edward Cook thinks. And when the Yakuza are unable to collect what he owes, Ed realizes, theyʼll go after his wife and child next. Broke, desperate, and unemployed, he stumbles upon an unusual ad: Chef wanted! Private chef for a high-profile businesswoman. One million yen per day.

Ed accepts the job. He hasnʼt earned any Michelin stars, but he knows his way around a kitchen. Leaving his life in Tokyo behind, he departs for an opulent estate in the mountains owned by the enigmatic and reclusive Hazeline Yamamoto, a disgraced socialite with a predatorʼs smile and an exacting palate. Hazelineʼs world is one of taste, connoisseurship, and experimentation—she is a certified gourmand. But when you can afford filet mignon for every meal, you begin to seek out the strange and forbidden.

The closer Ed gets to Hazeline and the brighter future that she promises—if he remains loyal—the nearer he is to realizing the chilling truth about her altruism. In this shadow world of unimaginable wealth, there are worse monsters than two-bit gangsters. The wind blowing through Hazeline’s home carries the sound of screaming, and Ed finds himself feeding all kinds of beasts.

Perfect for fans of Parasite and The Menu—enticing as a starter, meaty as a main dish, and full of satisfying just-desserts—Greedy is a suspenseful poison-pen note to classism and an ode to Japanese cuisine, a horror-tinged thriller unsuitable for vegetarians but full of shocking delights for every reader.

EXCERPT

They will kill me soon, he thinks to himself. Another hard kick comes, a firm leather toe cracking into his rib cage. He grunts and keeps his eyes closed. The thought of dying doesn’t bother Ed as it once would have; he can’t see another way out of his current predicament. Death would only resolve the problem. An easy exit for himself, eternal rest after so many sleepless weeks. There’s a viciously sharp kick to his shoulder, and he curls tighter into himself, knees to chin. He’s toyed with the idea of joining the ghosts of the Aokigahara suicide forest, of swinging from a hooked branch out of this life and into the next, but he knows it isn’t an option. When Ikagi and his troop of Yakuza grunts are unable to collect what they are owed from his cold corpse, they’ll turn to his innocent wife and child for payment. Sayuri. The thought makes Ed’s stomach clench with guilt-rusted fear. A glob of spit lands on his arm, hocked up by one of the gangsters booting him in the alleyway where he was jumped.

“Let this be your final reminder. Your payment is due soon. Aniki is waiting,” one of the thugs warns, referring to their boss, Isamu Ikagi. Then, he takes a tanto knife from his pocket, the curved point glinting sharply in the autumn sunlight. He wags it playfully right beside Ed’s nose, which twitches nervously. “Next time you can’t cough up anything of value, we’ll be leaving with your pinkie finger.” He grins, showcasing a silver canine.

Ed curls his hands into fists reflexively and manages to grunt an affirmation. He understands. He knows his time is running out, the interest rate escalating with every breath he takes. The second man throws one final blow to Ed’s side, and he groans, watching as they both stroll away together, leaving him shivering in the fetal position. He needs to bring in some cash, fast. Everyone knows Ikagi always collects his debts, and boy, does Ed owe some debt.

Everyone local has heard about Missing Ricky, the loudmouth American expat who got in too deep with Ikagi and hasn’t been seen since. The rumors say he’s ten feet under the Sumida River, rocks tied to his ankles. Ed laughed about it over pints, made jokes and blamed Sticky Ricky for getting into such a bad deal with such a bad group of guys. But then two short months later, he somehow found himself in the exact same position, driven by insatiable greed and an embarrassingly inaccurate ego informing him that he would be different. He wasn’t. He owes money to Isamu Ikagi, money he cannot pay off, and now he’s waiting to join the fishes with Dead Man Ricky.

After a while, Ed collects himself and slowly rises up off the ground. He winces at the pain in his side and knows that a black bruise will quickly bloom there as evidence of his alleyway dance. Another thing he will have to hide from Sayuri, his wife. He sighs and dusts himself off, picks up his empty wallet and looks down at the photograph on the ID card staring back at him. The man in the photo is young, a twenty-nine-year-old newlywed excited to be the owner of a Japanese ID card, to be pivoting from the dreary suburban UK life he was so bored of to an exciting, new, and flashy life in Tokyo. How things have changed in just eight years.

Ed pockets his wallet and straightens, forces himself to walk without a limp—practice for when he returns home. He finds he can manage it if he breathes slowly and carefully. But he is not yet home, so he allows himself to hunch over, to relish the slight relief of pain that his cragged posture brings, and waddles slowly to the subway, pausing several times and holding on to walls for support as he rests his aching body.

Once outside his front door, he steels himself, ready to perform once more. He lets himself in, removes his shoes, and is immediately met by the sight of Sayuri, who is bustling around the kitchen with Kaori perched on her hip. Ed’s toddler emits a joyful shriek at the sight of her father, and reaches out to him, her little fingers twitching.

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“Any luck with the job search?” Sayuri asks as soon as he enters the kitchen. The same automatic six words of greeting that he has heard on repeat for months, her tone bland and bored, not a taste of hopefulness behind them.

He flinches, but quickly recovers. “No, but I’m going to check the papers again,” he assures her, sticking his tongue out at Kaori in exchange for a giggle.

His wife sighs, but says nothing. She doesn’t have to—the disappointment was evident the first time he came home unsuccessful, and the second and third times, too. Now he expects it, and she knows she doesn’t need to bother vocalizing her frustrations. He is letting her down as an unemployed husband enough already, and she doesn’t even know the full extent of their troubles. When they married, he was a shiny promise of security for Sayuri, who had been brought up in a poor household in the outskirts of Osaka before managing to turn her life around, work her way up in hospitality, and get a job managing a hip coffee joint in Shinjuku. Ed was handsome, tall, white, intelligent, and swept her off her feet with promises of a happy, stable life together. It was a whirlwind romance built on the foundations of lust, but quickly became something deeper as they each found hopes of a better life within each other.

Despite their worries about his ability to get a job while not being fluent in Japanese, he quickly managed to get a decent-paying sales job at an English-speaking recruitment company that placed employees in hospitality roles, and for many years they were blissfully stress-free in their easy, comfortable marriage. Now, Ed can feel that just his presence in the kitchen is irritating Sayuri, and she huffs as she places Kaori gently down on the floor to crawl around while she begins to prep dinner. A welcome-home kiss is clearly not in the cards. Not too long ago, she would have glided over to him, taken his jacket, kissed him on the cheek and told a joke, so that the first sound from his lips on arriving home was a laugh. His eyes drop to the ground in guilt. She is not the problem. It’s him, and all his secrets.
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