All Chapters of Bound By A Borrowed Heart: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

GIANNAOne month in and the studio looks like the inside of my head. It’s beautiful but chaotic, layered, and very alive.Canvases lean against every wall, paint-stained rags hang from hooks, the turpentine smell has permanently claimed the east wing, and Elena has stopped complaining about the floors because I told her art doesn't respect hardwood and she told me I sound like Peculiar, which shut us both up for different reasons.The portrait watches over everything from above the easel like a guardian angel in oil paint but I'm not painting Peculiar anymore. The compulsion has shifted, the heart is now pulling me into somewhere rawer. I'm painting grief, rage and the strange flowers that grow in wreckage. A canvas of two hands opening to release a red bird, the fingers paint-stained, the bird trailing feathers that turn to sparks. A canvas of a woman walking through flames with lavender sprouting from her footprints. A canvas of a chest cracked open like a geode, with the hollow i

GIANNAMount Sinai's neurology wing has two faces. The private rooms upstairs have fresh flowers and park views while the charity ward in the basement has fluorescent lights that buzz at a frequency designed to erode hope, linoleum the color of old teeth, and curtains between beds that give you the illusion of privacy while delivering every cough and machine alarm from the patient next door.The charity ward smells like bleach and giving up. My father is in bed fourteen.Richard Meyers was a big man once with broad shoulders, barrel chest, hands that could frame a house and a laugh that filled whatever room he stood in. The man in this bed is a sketch of that person drawn in lighter lines, with erasure marks where the muscle used to be. He's lost about thirty pounds. His face is gaunt and the scar on his cheekbone, the one he got from Ryan's knife, the first cut, and the one that made me scream my fake heat out has healed into a jagged white line.I sit beside him and take his hand.

GIANNAIt’s three days since Baker called and I still can't close my eyes without hearing it."Your father didn't kill those people."The words play continuously in my head wherever I am. In the shower, in the studio, in the dark at 2 AM when the baby is restless and my heart is restless and my brain won't shut off for any reason whatsoever. My father is innocent. Ryan's entire revenge was built on a manufactured lie and Tasha's father, Tasha, my snake ass cousin, who I grew up with, who braided my hair, stole my snacks and was supposed to be family, her father might be the one who built the lie in the first place.I haven't told Ryan. Hell I might never, I don't know how to tell Ryan. "Your parents were murdered and my father was framed for it and the whole thing connects to a land deal and a shell company and my cousin's family", that's not a light conversation to have with someone who almost ruined your life for a mistake. And now Baker needs Sean's resources, Sean, who I feel as

GIANNASomething is wrong before I even open my eyes. My phone is buzzing on the nightstand and it’s not the usual single pulse of a notification but the sustained vibration of a device being hammered. I pick it up and the screen is a wall of tags, mentions, and DMs. Not the warm "welcome back" flood from last week but something different and hostile. I sit up in bed and start scrolling.People are tagging me in posts from another account. "TrueCanvas." An artist I've never heard of, with a page full of paintings that make my stomach drop.It has the same color palettes, the same emotional themes, the same compositions, the fire-and-flowers motif, the broken-open chest, the bird trailing sparks, everything. But TrueCanvas's posts have timestamps that appear to predate mine by weeks. According to the internet, I didn't create these images. I copied them, and the comments are turning on me fast."She's a fraud." "TrueCanvas did it first." "Gianna Meyers is a thief." "Can't believe I f

SEANSomething is wrong with the girl. She's been quiet for three days, quieter than usual, which is saying something for a woman who already communicates primarily through paint and silence. She's skipping the kitchen. She's locking her studio door, which she's never done. She's barely eating, according to Elena, who reported this to me with the grave urgency of a woman who considers uneaten food a personal failure.One morning, I find Mrs. Kate close to the garden and I ask subtly, "Gianna..She seems stressed," “Morning Mr. Cooper, Mrs. Kate sobs "I know she is. She just won't tell me why."I tell myself I'm monitoring a medical investment since the heart needs a healthy host. A stressed host is a risk factor and this is asset management.But I know It's not asset management, I know it, but the lie is more comfortable and I'm not ready to replace it with the truth.I pull up her social media on my office monitor and find TrueCanvas in under a minute. I read the accusations. I stud