Page 117 of Blind Justice

Ruth swallowed down a wave of bile.

Blake’s mouth flattened into a line, like he was annoyed at how complicated it had all become. "I placed the bomb that day."

The breath Ruth took felt shallow, like the room had shrunk around her.

"Then Noah got picked up by the FBI." Blake’s gaze flickered toward Noah, something unreadable in his expression. "And when you came to me, Ruth—" His lips curved into something that might have been a smile, if it wasn’t so detached. "At first, I was flattered."

Noah made a low, dangerous sound, but Blake continued, unfazed, "Then Dylan tried to stop you. You were clearly upset. Dylan came to me, said Melanie thought you may have seen the thumb drive holding Hilton’s records."

Her pulse pounded in my ears. The thumb drive. She had seen it. She had touched it. “I just didn’t know what I was looking at.”

"Noah, you kept close to the vest. You told me Hilton came to you, but you didn’t say you had the files. I figured if you were both gone, the firm was safe."

Noah’s grip tightened at her side, and she felt it—the quiet, controlled rage simmering beneath his skin.

Blake sighed. "I followed you to the steakhouse and waited. The bomb was on a short wavelength. One more step. I heard the fob beep, and I pushed the button."

His tone never wavered. Like he was just reciting facts. Like she was supposed to understand.

Noah’s breath shuddered, his muscles coiled tight, and for a second, she thought he was going to lunge.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he whispered, "You stood there and watched. You looked her in the eyes before you did it."

Blake shrugged. "I did."

Noah shook his head. “You hired a nurse to slip blood thinner beneath her cast.

Blake shifted his jaw back and forth. “The choice was a quick death or the blood thinner. The fact was, she was never alone. So under the cast was the choice. She'd drift away slowly, quietly, relatively painlessly, with no one noticing until it was too late.

And that was it. No excuses. No begging. Just the simple truth of it. He tried to kill her. And he didn’t regret it.

Alex arrived in time to hear the final words. As Alex took Blake into custody, Ruth exhaled shakily. Noah cupped her face, searching her eyes.

Her wide, teary gaze locked onto his. And for the first time in weeks, she saw him.

Epilogue

Six Months Later

Ruth tapped her pen against the edge of her desk, staring at the case file in front of her. It still felt strange—sitting on this side of the law, working for the district attorney’s office and wielding the power of prosecution. But this was where she was supposed to be.

After everything—after almost losing her life, after surviving major betrayals, after piecing herself back together—she had come to one inescapable truth: sometimes the best way to fix a broken system is from within. She wasn’t just finding the truth anymore. She was delivering justice.

And she could see again.

She hadn’t stopped marveling at it. The way sunlight spilled across her desk in the late afternoon, the subtle tension in a witness’s jaw during testimony, the look in Noah’s eyes. After months of darkness, each detail felt like a gift. Being blind had taught her more than she liked to admit—about trust, about dependence, about fear. But getting her vision back had taught her something else: how to look forward.

Still, not everything had healed cleanly.

Her eyes flicked briefly toward the corner of her desk, where a small brass nameplate gleamed. Melanie had given it to her on her first day at Ellison & Grant, long before Ruth knew the truth. Before the betrayal. She hadn’t seen Melanie since her arrest, but sometimes she still heard her voice, still saw her smile—warm, efficient, practiced.

Ruth hadn’t figured out what to do with the hurt. The sting of it was quieter now, dulled with time, but it still surfaced when she least expected it. She had trusted Melanie. More than she should have. And even though she’d learned to live with that mistake, she hadn’t quite forgiven herself for it.

The sound of knuckles rapping against her door pulled her from her thoughts. She glanced up, grinning before she even heard his voice. “Still getting used to that desk, Counselor?”

Evan Shipley stood in the doorway, arms crossed, his sharp navy-blue suit a clear reflection of his new title: United States Attorney for South Dakota.

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