She Was Never Just a Pretty Face novel Chapter 240

An hour later.

Inside a cramped, tiny apartment, the man lay on the sofa, resting with his eyes closed.

He knew he shouldn't be here.

But he was greedy for that fleeting trace of a woman's tenderness.

It had been entirely too long since Hilda had looked at him with anything resembling warmth.

Standing behind the sofa, the young girl pressed her slender fingers against his temples, gently massaging away the tension. Luther had been grinding himself to the bone for Project Sovereign, his nerves strung painfully tight. Compounded by the absolute lack of joy or affection from his wife, a deep, creeping loneliness had set in. And people were most prone to making mistakes when they were lonely—like coming to Summer Shaw's apartment just to bask in a young girl's gentleness. Even if it was just a temple massage, a man and a woman alone in a room together could hardly be called innocent.

He had no idea that Hilda was currently being brutalized by the director.

Day and night, in a place he couldn't see, she was surviving in the most degrading, soul-crushing misery.

Luther left right around dawn.

He didn't say a word; he simply left a bank card on the table.

It held $2 million.

More than enough to ensure Summer would never have to sell her company to anyone else again.

Summer accepted the card.

An unspoken understanding settled between them.

Luther still hadn't crossed the line into physical intimacy with her. To him, she was nothing but a substitute—a purely emotional pacifier.

Luther went downstairs and drove away.

Some things, once started, were impossible to stop.

Later, Summer moved into a much more luxurious, high-end apartment.

Secretary Lori had absolutely no idea.

— About Luther's ongoing entanglement with Summer Shaw.

Whenever Luther felt exhausted or overwhelmed by his own isolation, Summer would massage him, or softly sing to him through the entire night. She even set up an easel in the apartment. Sometimes, when Luther came over, she would just paint, while he sat silently on the sofa, pulling out a cigarette and smoking it slowly.

He looked at Summer, but he was mourning the old Hilda.

The Hilda who used to love him with her entire soul.

Luther never actually lost himself to the illusion.

Because Summer wasn't Hilda. Whether it was her background, her beauty, or her sheer brilliance, the gap between them was measured in lightyears. Summer was merely a pretty trinket bought for his viewing pleasure, a distraction to keep the crushing loneliness at bay. He still made the occasional trip to the sanatorium.

But the young nurse had already been fired by the director.

Severing Hilda's one and only lifeline.

Every time he visited, Hilda remained dead-eyed and hollow, lying there rigidly while he took his pleasure. Eventually, as her belly grew impossibly large, Luther mostly stopped going. Partly out of sheer resentment, and partly because the launch of Project Sovereign was consuming every waking second of his life. On the rare occasion he actually had free time, he found he'd rather sink into the uncomplicated, paid-for softness of Summer's apartment.

...

Before he knew it, mid-November had arrived.

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