All Chapters of The Billionaire's Showgirl: Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

88 Chapters

Chapter Sixty-One

The moment Luca understood that I was still inside the theater, the entire world seemed to stop breathing.I saw it happen through the haze and smoke and flashing emergency lights, not with perfect clarity, but with the strange, sharpened awareness that comes when fear strips away everything unimportant. The backstage monitor still hanging above the corridor flickered between camera angles from the auditorium, and for one impossible second, I saw him rise from his private box.The entire audience saw it too.Hundreds of people had already been evacuated into the grand lobby of Euphoria, their beautiful gowns and expensive tuxedos illuminated by emergency lights as security officers guided them farther from the building. Politicians, celebrities, investors, and reporters all turned their attention upward as Luca Moretti descended the stairs two at a time.Someone tried to stop him.I watched one of his security men grab his arm.Brian.

Chapter Sixty-Two

The world outside Euphoria had become a storm of flashing lights.Not the beautiful kind that belonged to cameras and chandeliers and opening-night celebrations, but the violent red and white glare of emergency vehicles reflecting across glass towers, polished marble, and the terrified faces of people who had arrived expecting champagne and spectacle and instead found themselves watching smoke pour from the theater Luca Moretti had built like a temple.Paramedics surrounded me almost immediately.Someone wrapped a blanket around my shoulders.Someone else pressed an oxygen mask into my hands and told me to breathe slowly.I wanted to tell them that breathing slowly was an unreasonable request considering I had just been trapped inside a burning theater, carried out in the arms of a billionaire, and photographed by what appeared to be half the media outlets in Nevada.Instead, I nodded because arguing required air.Luca did not move fr

Chapter Sixty-Three

The hospital released me the next morning with a plastic bag full of discharge papers, a list of warning signs to watch for, and a nurse who kept looking at Luca as though she might reconsider her entire career if he asked nicely.I couldn't even blame her.He looked devastating in a wrinkled dress shirt, soot still faintly shadowing the edges of his cuffs despite having changed sometime during the night, his hair darker than usual from exhaustion and his jaw rough with the kind of stubble that made him look less like the polished king of New Zenith and more like the dangerous man beneath the crown.He had not slept.I knew because I had tried to pretend I was asleep for most of the night and had watched him through the sliver between my lashes.He had sat beside my hospital bed with one hand wrapped around mine, silent and immovable, while doctors came in and out, while nurses checked monitors, while Brian stood guard outside the door and half the

Chapter Sixty-Four

The drive back to Las Vegas felt completely different than the drive out.The desert stretched endlessly beyond the windows, golden beneath the afternoon sun, but New Zenith remained visible in the distance for far longer than I wanted, its beautiful skyline shimmering against the horizon like a promise that had already begun to crack.Euphoria still stood.The city still stood.Luca's dream still stood.Yet something fundamental had changed.The illusion of safety was gone.Brian sat in the front passenger seat, speaking quietly into his phone while coordinating security details, and for the first time since meeting him, his calm professionalism carried an edge that made him seem less like an employee and more like a soldier preparing for war.Luca sat beside me in complete silence.That frightened me most of all.I had seen him angry.I had seen him amused.I had seen him cold, commanding, affectio

Chapter Sixty-Five

The penthouse had never felt so full.By the time we returned to The Cashmere Crown, security personnel occupied nearly every corner of Luca's private floor, their quiet conversations carried through earpieces while additional guards moved between elevators and stairwells with the kind of practiced efficiency that made it clear this was not a temporary inconvenience.This was a fortress.And I was apparently the treasure locked inside it.The private elevator doors slid open.Two men in black suits nodded as we stepped through.Another stood near the entrance to Luca's office.A fourth was positioned by the windows overlooking the Strip.I stopped walking."Oh my God."Brian glanced over his shoulder."Problem?"I looked at him."Brian, are we expecting an invasion?"The corner of his mouth twitched.The closest thing to a smile I had ever seen from him."Just being cautio

Chapter Sixty-Six

I made it exactly three hours before I snapped.Three hours of security guards outside every door.Three hours of people announcing themselves whenever they entered a room.Three hours of watching Brian and Luca speak in low, serious voices about private investigators, background checks, and contingency plans that sounded less like ordinary precautions and more like preparations for a small military campaign.And three hours of realizing that nobody—not a single person—had actually asked me what I wanted.The sun had disappeared beyond the Las Vegas skyline, leaving the Strip glowing beneath the massive windows of Luca's penthouse, and yet I still felt as though the walls around me had grown closer with every passing minute.I stood in the kitchen, staring at the city below while Luca worked at the island behind me, reviewing documents that Brian had brought up from his office.The normalcy of it should have comforted me.

Chapter Sixty-Seven

By morning, Luca’s penthouse had become less of a home and more of a very expensive fortress.I stood barefoot in the bedroom, wearing one of his white button-down shirts while two men installed something small and metallic near the balcony doors. My clothes had been brought from my house sometime before dawn. My books were stacked neatly on the nightstand. My Kindle was charging beside the bed. Even my favorite blanket had been folded over a chair like it had always belonged there.It should have comforted me.Instead, it made my skin feel too tight.My life had been packed up and moved while I slept.Luca stood near the doorway in black slacks and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, speaking quietly into his phone.“No,” he said, his voice calm in the way that made other people panic faster. “The secondary elevator gets a separate code. Sienna’s access stays private. No exceptions.”Sienna’s access.Private.I stared at him until he ended the call.“Do I get a bro

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Luca shut down the penthouse before I had fully finished reading the card.One second, I was standing in his bedroom with five ugly words burning through my hand.The next, Luca’s voice cut through the room with a calm so cold it seemed to strip the air of oxygen.“No one comes up.”Brian straightened immediately.“Already done.”“No,” Luca said. “No one. Not staff. Not housekeeping. Not Mrs. Alvarez. Not casino management. Not my own mother if she appears downstairs with a priest and a warrant.”Despite everything, my gaze snapped to him.“Your mother?”“Not now, Sienna.”That was probably fair.Brian was already speaking into his phone, moving toward the door with the sharp, efficient focus of a man who had been waiting his entire life for a crisis that required several radios and no facial expressions.“Penthouse lockdown,” he said. “Full interior sweep. Elevator access frozen until Mr. Moretti clears it personally. I want names on every guard assigned between midnight and nine thi

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Brian did not say the missing footage was a problem.That would have been too small a word.Problem was what happened when a costume zipper broke five minutes before curtain. Problem was Beth losing one earring and making everyone crawl around the dressing room floor while she swore it was cursed. Problem was Hannah deciding she had been personally victimized by fluorescent lighting.This was not a problem.This was the kind of silence that made powerful men stop moving.Luca stood at the foot of the bed, his body perfectly still, his face stripped of every soft thing he had allowed me to see only minutes before.“How is it missing?” he asked.Brian stepped farther into the room, tablet in hand, his expression grim.“Not erased. Not damaged. Disabled.”My fingers tightened around the blanket.“Disabled?”Brian looked at me. “Multiple camera systems went dark before

Chapter Seventy

Jake arrived at the penthouse looking like he had aged five years overnight.I saw him step out of the private elevator between two security guards, his usually easy smile gone, his hair messy in a way that did not look styled, and his face pale beneath the expensive lighting of Luca’s foyer.He stopped the second he saw me.For one strange moment, neither of us moved.Then he exhaled.“Sienna.”My name came out rough.I stood from the couch, Luca’s jacket still wrapped around my shoulders even though the penthouse was not cold.“Jake.”He glanced past me, taking in the guards, Brian standing near the hallway, and Luca positioned by the windows with a phone in one hand and murder in his eyes.Not actual murder.Probably.Luca had allowed Jake up only after three rounds of security clearance, two phone calls, and what sounded like a background check so invasive I wa

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