King of Greed

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-11

Chapters 12-22

Chapters 23-33

Chapter 34-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 1-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary: “Alessandra”

Alessandra Davenport has become numb after years of coming second to the ambitions of her husband, Dominic. Although Alessandra has accepted these circumstances for years, she feels a growing resentment toward him because always prioritizes his work and his wealth ahead of her. Alessandra has invited her friends over to celebrate a financial milestone for her small pressed-flower business, Floria Designs, which she started online nearly two years ago. However, Dominic does not know about this, nor does he bother asking her about her dreams or ambitions. Alessandra reminds him of their 10-year wedding anniversary trip, which is coming up this weekend, and Dominic promises not to forget. When Alessandra retreats to their bedroom to sleep, Dominic stays in his office to continue his work.

Chapter 2 Summary: “Dominic”

Dominic deals with several small crises at work, but toward the end of the day, he faces a larger problem with tumbling stocks that might affect his company. He stays late to solve the issue, completely forgetting that he is supposed to meet Alessandra at home so that they can begin their 10-year anniversary trip.

Chapter 3 Summary: “Alessandra”

Alessandra waits for Dominic two hours past the time they’d planned to meet. After several calls are sent to his voicemail, something inside Alessandra breaks. She cries over the sorry state of their marriage and the loss of her individuality since she succumbed to the role of being his wife, his hostess, and a superficial socialite. Alessandra decides that she has reached her breaking point. She removes her wedding ring, then packs her things and moves out of their home.

Chapter 4 Summary: “Dominic”

Dominic returns home to discover that Alessandra is gone and has left her ring behind. When he sees his luggage waiting by the bedroom closet, he remembers the anniversary trip and begins to panic. He calls Alessandra’s friends (Vivian, Sloane, and Isabella), but he receives no information about Alessandra’s whereabouts. When his housekeeper, Camila, informs him that Alessandra must have left about 30 minutes ago, Dominic rushes out onto the streets of New York City to search for her.

Chapter 5 Summary: “Alessandra”

Rather than staying with her friends, Alessandra checks into a hotel, paying with only cash so that Dominic cannot trace her. She falls asleep to memories of how their relationship first began. When she wakes the next morning, she discovers several missed calls and texts from Dominic and her friends. After updating her friends, Alessandra gives Dominic her location. He meets her at the hotel and apologizes for forgetting about their anniversary trip. When he attempts to excuse himself by claiming a work emergency, Alessandra reveals her true feelings about his failure to prioritize their relationship. Though Dominic stresses the importance of remaining financially secure, Alessandra knows that no amount of wealth is ever enough for him. When Dominic asks her to come home and talk about their issues, Alessandra refuses and asks for a divorce.

Chapter 6 Summary: “Dominic”

Alessandra admits that she doesn’t believe Dominic would choose her over a work emergency because he hasn’t done so in a long time. Dominic promises that they can solve their problems, but Alessandra is resolute in her desire for a divorce.

Chapter 7 Summary: “Dominic”

A flashback to 11 years ago reveals how Dominic and Alessandra first met. Due to his dyslexia, a younger Dominic fails English literature and composition—a core requirement that he must pass in order to graduate from Thayer University with his double economics and business degree. Professor Ehrlich arranges for Dominic to meet with a tutor—Alessandra. Dominic shows up to the first tutoring lesson, determined to dislike Alessandra, yet this quickly proves difficult when she makes an effort to get to know him personally and to understand his learning styles. When she discovers that his schedule is busy packed with classes and two jobs so that he can afford tuition, she offers to meet him for tutoring late at night after his work shift. On Monday night, Alessandra shows up at Dominic’s work to tutor him. Dominic appreciates the gesture and is receptive to her teaching. The lesson goes well, and Dominic agrees to make the tutoring a weekly appointment.

Chapter 8 Summary: “Alessandra”

One week after Alessandra asked Dominic for a divorce, she temporarily moves in with her friend Sloane and begins to hunt for apartments. A few days ago, she filed for divorce, and when she receives a call from her lawyer, Coal Pearson, he reveals that Dominic has refused to sign the papers. Alessandra travels to Dominic’s workplace and struggles to gain an audience with him. His assistant makes it clear that Dominic is booked with meetings and has no time for Alessandra. However, their conversation is interrupted by Dominic’s arrival. He scolds the assistant for keeping his wife away from him and orders her never to do so again. Alessandra tells Dominic that he has two weeks to sign the divorce papers or the ensuing legal war will get ugly.

Chapter 9 Summary: “Dominic”

Two weeks have now passed since Alessandra came to Dominic’s office, but he still hasn’t signed the divorce papers. Instead, Dominic has flooded Alessandra with gifts and calls, and he has even booked a marriage counseling session, but she has ignored all of his efforts to reconnect.

Dominic visits the Valhalla Club to get rid of his frustrations. He meets his friends, Dante Russo and Kai Young, at the bar. When they ask about his marriage, Dominic insists that he will fix his relationship through counseling or plan a getaway trip that will allow him and Alessandra to reconnect. Dante and Kai don’t agree with this plan and insist that Dominic is the problem. His obsession with work has caused him to ignore his wife’s presence, and his friends tell him that fixing his marriage “requires an entire lifestyle and mindset shift” (61).

A flashback reminds Dominic that their marriage started with Friday date nights every week. However, when he started his company, Davenport Capital, he eventually skipped one Friday dinner to meet with an important client. What started as only one raincheck then turned into several.

Chapter 10 Summary: “Alessandra”

Alessandra happens upon a rental space during her walk home to Sloane’s and realizes that it would make a perfect in-person site for her pressed flower business. She calls the number listed on the rental and leaves a voicemail requesting more information. Upon returning to Sloane’s apartment building, Alessandra discovers 100 bouquets in the hallway outside, addressed to her from Dominic. Rather than accepting them, Alessandra tasks the delivery people with bringing them to the nearest hospital and distributing them amongst the patients. Alessandra goes out for drinks that night rather than staying inside. She enjoys harmless flirting with men at the bar until Dominic shows up. He scares the men off and claims to be there for a client meeting that just ended.

Chapter 11 Summary: “Dominic”

Alessandra once again demands that Dominic sign the divorce papers. If he doesn’t, his assets will be split equally between them, as they never signed a prenuptial agreement. When a familiar song starts playing over the building’s speakers, Dominic asks her to pretend that they are the people they used to be and dance with him. She reluctantly does so. The dance leads to an intimate moment, and they kiss. The interaction becomes passionate, and they move into the staff bathroom for privacy. Dominic pleasures Alessandra, but after the heat of the moment, she pulls away and calls it all a mistake. She flees the bar. When Dominic leaves the bathroom afterward, he is greeted by the sight of Roman, the foster brother he has not seen or heard from in a decade.

Chapters 1-11 Analysis

In addition to exploring the primary issues in Dominic and Alessandra’s marriage, the novel’s exposition also remains true to the established details of Huang’s interconnected stories, for several supporting characters are featured throughout the Kings of Sin series, and others, like Roman, will play a key role in the conflict of King of Greed. Many familiar settings from the series are also employed, including the general setting of New York City and the more niche setting of the Valhalla Club, where the wealthy bachelors of the series tend to meet. By including these key details, Huang strengthens the continuity of her world from one novel to the next, and she also makes it a point to foreshadow the difficulties that the protagonists will soon encounter. For example, although Roman’s introduction to the narrative is very brief, it nonetheless carries an undercurrent of ominous foreboding. Even the physical descriptions of his character allude to the potential danger he poses to Dominic, from his “knife-blade cheekbones” to his “cold and amused” (81) green eyes. These details clearly delineate Roman as an antagonist in the novel, although his nefarious intentions are not yet revealed.

Rather than drawing out the unspoken resentment that permeates the Davenports’ troubled marriage, Huang quickly advances the second-chance romance trope when Alessandra demands a divorce. Her determination to change her life emphasizes the importance of Maintaining Independence in Relationships, for her lack of individuality in the face of her husband’s single-minded focus on work forces her to realize just how empty her existence currently is. Realizing that she has taken on a ruinously passive role as Dominic’s wife for over a decade, Alessandra takes the bold step of moving out into the world on her own terms, and this decision precipitates Dominic’s inner crisis and his efforts to salvage his relationship. Thus, upon meeting with his friends, Dante and Kai, Dominic is forced to acknowledge the error of his ways and comes to regret not Prioritizing Love over Ambition. His sudden understanding and remorse hints at the possibility of reconciliation, and in this scene, it is clear that Huang will ultimately adhere to the conventions of the second-chance romance trope, which demands that the characters find some form of redemption, forgiveness, and growth. As Kai tells Dominic, a deliberate shift in both “lifestyle and mindset” (62) is needed before Dominic will be able to redeem himself in Alessandra’s eyes and gain the forgiveness necessary to save their marriage.

The frank honesty of Dominic’s friends highlights the key lesson that Dominic must learn, but these underlying truths are also explored further in the chapters told from Alessandra’s perspective. She “believed in quality time and conversation; he believed money could fix everything. […] [She] realized now that […] [h]e would never have enough. The more he acquired—money, status, power—the more he wanted at the expense of everything else” (33). Multiple times in the opening chapters and throughout the novel, Alessandra stresses that she doesn’t care about their penthouse, their lavish vacations, or their expensive possessions. Her attitude draws attention to the novel’s title and implies that Dominic must change his own value system if he wishes to repair his marriage.

Dominic’s unofficial love affair with wealth and power hints at Huang’s emphasis on The Illusory Connection between Wealth and Happiness. As Alessandra tells Dominic, “I don’t care about the fancy penthouse or clothes or jet. I would rather have a husband. A real one, not one just in name” (32). The frustrated tone of her declaration indicates that she has been holding onto this resentment for quite some time, and it is clear that Dominic holds skewed beliefs about what is most important in life. By contrast, Dominic later reveals his own thought processes about money and success. When he first started Davenport Capital years ago, he wanted the world to know his name. Determined to gain recognition, status, and power—“everything [he]’d ever dreamed of” (62), he intended to make up for his emotional absence with Alessandra at some unspecified future date: whenever he had enough money. However, as the opening chapters of the novel indicate, he never feels as though he has “enough,” because he never gains any true happiness from the wealth and success that he continues to chase.

Unlike many of Huang’s other novels, which often focus on the ever-shifting hostility of the enemies-to-lovers romance trope, King of Greed takes a very different approach. These particular protagonists are not rivals or enemies, nor are they newly acquainted. Instead, their interpersonal troubles arise from the very lack of interaction over the course of years. Alessandra and Dominic have an essentially nonconfrontational relationship; they pass one another like ships in the night, ignoring the fundamental problems of their marriage until the status quo becomes too difficult to maintain. Before they realize it, their marriage is over—seemingly with no hope of repairing the damage done. Alessandra has become indifferent to Dominic’s constant insistence on prioritizing work and amassing more wealth. Meanwhile, Dominic has become so invested in his business that he fails to perceive the dissatisfaction that both he and Alessandra feel with their lives.