Crystal Hefner only loved Hugh Hefner like a dying elderly relative.
The former Playmate was married to the Playboy magnate – who died age 91 in 2017 from sepsis – from 2012 until he passed away, and has now unveiled her brutal true feelings towards her late husband.
She says in her new memoir ‘Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself’: “Life in the (Playboy) mansion wasn’t the fairy tale I had once hoped it would be.
“From the outside, sure, it had all the trappings of a fairy tale. But it wasn’t, and everyone who lived there knew it.
“I was never in love with Hef, but I loved this old man in the ways you are supposed to love your elders.
“In the ways you are supposed to love someone who is nearing the end of a long and complicated life.”
Crystal first made an impression on Hugh during a 2008 Halloween party at the Playboy Mansion and was invited to move into the infamous residence after spending the night with the pornography publishing pioneer.
She was 21 years old at the time and quickly overshadowed his other stable of favourite Playboy Bunnies to become Hugh’s ‘No1 girlfriend’.
On Christmas Eve in 2010, Hugh proposed to Crystal – but she says it was never a formal proposition they should marry and said she never technically said yes.
But the couple married on New Year’s Eve in 2012.
Crystal recently told People magazine about her warped relationship with Hugh: “I realised I was dealing with a really big power imbalance.
“It seemed like a world of success and fantasy, but everyone’s having to sleep with an 80-year-old. There’s a price. Everything has a price.”
Before becoming a Playboy Bunny, Crystal was a psychology major at San Diego State, but she never finished school.
Her book also details the hardships she endured before her career as a Playboy Bunny began.
Her dad Ray Harris died when she was 12 after a battle with cancer and Crystal later lost her first love Greg, who was deployed in Afghanistan.
Greg was her second high school boyfriend, and the pair had a “magic and blissful” relationship until Crystal learned she was pregnant.
She had an abortion, which she said led her to feel “worthless” and “irresponsible” and caused her breakup with Greg.
Crystal – who is set to go back to using her maiden name of Harris – said she then entered a “world of self-destruction”, which included another boyfriend who was stuck in a world of drugs, alcohol and porn.