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The Girl He Left Behind
Last Updated : 2026-10-13
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“I don’t care anymore. I have friends now. I’m sure you made plenty in London.” She didn’t look affected at all. The coldness of it actually made me shiver. “You’re being immature.” “You’re an asshole.” “Watch your tone. I’m still your boss.” “My apologies, Mr. Montgomery,” she said, quiet now. “Don’t I get a welcome-back hug?” I asked, hoping, now that we’d finally said something real, she’d give an inch. Jasmine Ray and Japheth Montgomery were best friends before they were anything else — before four years of silence turned two children into strangers wearing grown-up names. Then he comes home. As her boss. Japheth is handed a company in crisis, a rival who wants to watch him fail, and the one person he never stopped thinking about, sitting behind a desk with a stranger’s coldness in her eyes. Jasmine is handed something worse: a father who’s spent nine years reminding her what she owes this family, and a man she trusts turning that debt into a weapon. Because someone close to them needs one thing — a signature, one document, one moment of Japheth’s total trust — and he knows exactly how to make Jasmine get it for him. She has one impossible choice: protect her family by becoming, once again, exactly what she swore she’d never be to Japheth again. Or risk everything to tell him the truth, and pray he doesn’t throw her out of his life a second time. This time, staying quiet isn’t safety. It’s the same mistake that cost her everything once already.
View MoreChapter 1
Prologue
Prologue: Goldfish
**JASMINE POV**
I was on the balcony of a mansion that wasn't my home, sketchpad on my knees, when I heard a car pull into the drive. I leaned over the railing to look.
Japheth.
He didn't slam the car door the way he usually did, showing off for whoever was watching. He just stood there a second too long before he moved, and even from three floors up I could see something was wrong with his face.
I grabbed my drawing and ran.
Our families had been tangled together as long as I could remember — my parents worked for his, had worked for the Montgomerys since before I was born. I knew which stairs in this house creaked. I knew Japheth Montgomery better than I knew most of my own relatives, which was probably why I could tell, from three floors up, in half a second, that something was wrong.
By the time I made it downstairs, he was already in the foyer, letting his mother hug him hello more than actually hugging her back. She had her arms out wide and he stepped away the second he could. Japheth hated being babied. Which meant whatever had happened to put that look on his face, he didn't want anyone asking about it.
So obviously, I was going to ask about it.
He took the stairs two at a time and nearly walked straight into me. I was standing right in the middle of them, sketchpad hugged to my chest.
"Peaches!" He blinked, surprised, and just like that, whatever had been on his face a second ago was gone, replaced by the usual smirk. "What are you doing here, goldfish?"
I narrowed my eyes at him. Here we go.
"You're a bully, Japheth," I said, not looking at him.
"Well, you *look* like a goldfish." He stretched his eyes wide, mocking me. "And what's that?" He nodded at my sketchpad.
"Nothing."
"Didn't sound like nothing." Before I could step back, he'd already snatched it out of my hands.
"Give it back."
"As if you actually know how to draw." He was already flipping through it, grinning like he already knew what he'd find, which was nothing, because I wasn't any good, because I never showed anyone, because —
He stopped flipping.
I watched his face change. The grin slipped, just slightly, like he'd forgotten he was supposed to be holding it in place.
"You did these?"
"Give it back, Japheth."
He didn't. He kept going, slower now, and I felt my whole stomach drop because I knew exactly which page was coming.
He found it.
He went very still.
I couldn't read what he was thinking. I'd known him my whole life and I genuinely could not tell whether he was about to laugh at me so hard I'd never live it down, or say something worse than laughing — something that would actually mean it.
"Who's this."
It wasn't a question. He knew exactly who it was — him, badly drawn, hearts scattered around his stupid head, because I was twelve, and I hadn't thought anyone would ever see it.
I could lie. I still had time to lie.
"That's you," I said instead.
He didn't say anything back.
For a second that felt worse than anything he could have said. Japheth always had something to say — that was half of who he was. Watching him go quiet felt like watching him disappear somewhere I couldn't follow.
"Say something," I said, hating how small my voice came out.
He closed the sketchpad slowly, like it might be something breakable now. When he looked up, whatever had been on his face when he first walked through the door — that look like he wanted to cry — was gone completely, replaced by something I didn't have a name for.
"Why didn't you show me?"
Not *why did you draw this*. Not *this is weird*. Just — why didn't I show him.
"Because you would've laughed."
"I'm not laughing."
"You will. Later. When it's funnier to you than it is right now."
He didn't argue with that, which somehow hurt more than if he had. He held the sketchpad out, and when I reached for it, he didn't let go right away.
"You looked upset earlier," I said. "Before you saw me. What happened?"
Something shut behind his eyes. "Nothing happened."
"Japheth—"
"Drop it, Peaches." His voice came out sharper than I'd ever heard it, sharp enough that I actually flinched. He noticed. His jaw tightened like he was angry at himself for it.
"Okay," I said quietly. "I'm dropping it."
We sat on the stairs anyway, shoulders almost touching, neither of us saying anything else — which, for a boy who filled every silence in every room he ever walked into, was its own kind of answer. Whatever had put that look on his face, he wasn't going to tell me. Not that day.
But I wasn't going to forget it, either.
Latest chapter
The Girl He Left Behind 31 — Loose Ends
**VICTOR KADE POV**The call came in at six in the morning, which should have told me immediately that whatever it carried wasn't going to improve my mood."Mr. Kade, we need to talk about the timeline," said a voice I recognized but had never bothered to learn the actual name of, one of three men I'd engaged through an intermediary eight months ago to apply the kind of pressure polite conversation never quite manages on its own."There is no timeline anymore," I said, already irritated at having to explain this before my coffee had finished brewing. "The matter's been resolved. I've reached an agreement with Montgomery directly.""That's not really how this works, Mr. Kade." Something in his tone had shifted since our last conversation, a casualness that hadn't been there before, the particular confidence of a man who no longer considered himself an employee taking instruction. "We've got our own arrangement with the people financing this operation. Your grudge was useful to get thin
Last Updated : 2026-10-13The Girl He Left Behind 30 — The Offer
JAPHETH POVVictor Kade's office occupied the top floor of a building with his own name on it in brushed steel letters, which struck me as the kind of detail a man only bothers with when he's spent eleven years imagining the moment someone else would have to look up and read it."You didn't have to come," Dad said quietly, as we rode the elevator up together, Voss on one side of him, me on the other, Jasmine having insisted on joining despite my attempts to talk her out of walking directly into the orbit of a man who'd already proven he knew exactly how to use the people we loved against us."Yes, I did," I said. "You're not doing this alone.""I did plenty of things alone for eleven years, Japheth. I can handle one meeting.""That's exactly the problem, Dad. You handled it alone for eleven years, and look where that got us."He didn't argue with that, which told me more than any response could have.The elevator doors opened onto a reception area so deliberately understated it border
Last Updated : 2026-10-11The Girl He Left Behind 29 — Damage Control
JAPHETH POVBy midnight, my father's dining room table had become a war room, which was a strange thing to witness happen to a table that had, as recently as Thanksgiving, hosted an argument about whether stuffing belonged inside the turkey or beside it."The story's already moving," said Priscilla Awosika, the crisis PR consultant Dad had called in sometime around eleven, a formidable woman in a blazer sharp enough to cut glass who'd clearly been woken from a dead sleep and had decided to be furious about it in a very professional, controlled way. "Two gossip columns have it as of forty minutes ago. 'Business partnership gone sour,' 'decade-old betrayal,' very dramatic language, deliberately vague on specifics, which tells me whoever's feeding it to them wants the mystery to do the work instead of the facts.""That's Kade," Voss said, arriving somehow even at this hour in a full suit, looking like a man who considered sleep a weakness he hadn't yet gotten around to eliminating. "He w
Last Updated : 2026-10-09The Girl He Left Behind 28 — Victor Kade
VICTOR KADE POVEleven years is a long time to hold a grudge properly. Most men lose the thread of it somewhere around year three get distracted by a new marriage, a new venture, some fresh disappointment that crowds out the old one. I've always found that a failure of discipline more than a failure of feeling. A grudge, properly maintained, is simply a long-term investment. You water it. You wait. You do not let impatience rush a return that compounds better with time.Sebastian Montgomery bought me out of my own company for eleven million dollars, on paper, at a valuation I agreed to under duress, convinced by three lawyers and a very persuasive threat of litigation that it was the only reasonable deal on the table. Eighteen months later, Montgomery Industries signed a distribution contract that tripled its value overnight. I watched a man wearing my idea walk into every magazine profile for the next decade, charming, humble, self-made, never once mentioning the partner he'd quietl
Last Updated : 2026-10-09
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