Chapter 9 Ridge
NINE
Ridge
Jacques St. Germain: A wealthy and mysterious man, hosted extravagant parties in his Royal Street home but was rumored never to eat, only drink wine.
Legend says a woman escaped his home, claiming he attacked her and tried to drink her blood.
When authorities searched the house, they allegedly found bottles of wine mixed with human blood, but St. Germain had vanished, fueling his vampire legend.
As I lead her through the house toward the concealed stairwell, I catch her slowing, her attention snagging on details she pretends not to care about.
She looks up at the ceilings, the molding, the way the hallway angles just slightly off true.
“This place is bigger than it looks from the outside,” she says. “And there is definitely a quiet, almost spooky vibe about it.”
I let her walk, let her look, without commentary. She’s mapping it anyway. Everyone does.
She stops short when the panel slides open, revealing the narrow stairwell spiraling down.
“Let me guess,” she says, peering into the dim. “This is where you keep the bodies.”
“We’re heading underground,” I say. “Watch your step.”
“A basement,” she mutters, gripping the rail as she starts down. “Of course. Why wouldn’t there be a basement under a haunted mansion?”
The lighting is low and steady, circular fixtures spaced just far enough apart to keep the descent from feeling endless. Her steps slow as the air cools.
“How far down does it go?”
“You'll find out soon enough. Keep walking.”
She huffs but keeps moving.
The stairwell ends in steel. A thick door sits flush with the concrete at the bottom of the stairs, matte gray and scarred with use. No handle on her side. Just a keypad and a palm reader set into the wall.
She stops when she sees it.
“Well,” she says. “That’s comforting.”
I step past her and press my left hand to the reader, since my right is wrapped. There’s a brief pause, then a low mechanical release. The door swings inward with a muted, weighted sound that tells you exactly how much force it’s designed to resist.
The space beyond opens deliberately. The ceiling lifts. The walls widen. Light spreads in a way that feels planned, not improvised.
She stops short.
“Oh,” she says. Then, quieter, “This isn’t what I expected.”
Most people say something like that the first time. The bunker doesn’t announce itself as a bunker. It looks more like a private residence stripped of windows and dressed in concrete and steel. Clean lines. Thoughtful lighting. No sense of hurry or panic in the design.
This space wasn’t built to survive a single night. It was built to last.
Her eyes travel deliberately around the main living space. She takes in the ceiling panels, the recessed lighting, and the breadth of the room that stretches farther than the stairwell suggests.
She takes a few careful steps forward, testing the floor as if it might give way beneath her.
“This isn’t a panic room,” she says. “This is… a compound.”
“You could call it that,” I reply. “Panic rooms are for reacting. My father designed this for planning.”
She turns to look at me. “Planning for what? Nuclear fallout? The end of civilization?”
That’s rhetorical, so I leave it there. She can come up with her own assumptions.
The controlled temperature. The quiet hum of systems running behind the walls. The absence of clutter. Everything here serves a purpose, and nothing was chosen just to be comfortable. My father believed comfort should be earned, not assumed.
My hand tightens reflexively, the stitches pulling beneath the wrap, a reminder that comfort came at a cost last night.
“For anything that can’t be handled upstairs,” I say finally. “Power failures. Lockdowns. Extended stays. Situations where someone needs to disappear for a while.”
I don’t tell her this place was meant to be invisible. Once it was finished, it became my father’s refuge, the one space he trusted absolutely. He understood that security wasn’t just steel and concrete. It was psychology.
I’ve already told her more than I should have, so I leave it there.
She exhales, slow but uneven. “It looks like you could survive down here for a long time.”
“Yes,” I say. “That’s the idea.”
Her attention shifts back to me, sharper now. The humor drains out of her posture. This isn’t fascination anymore. It’s recognition.
She’s stopped seeing a house with a bunker beneath it.
She’s seeing the kind of family that builds places like this and plans for worst-case scenarios.
I step aside, letting her see the rest of the space without comment. There’s nothing to conceal, and no reason to rush her through it.
“Get used to it,” I tell her. “This is where you’ll be staying.”
She keeps walking, head tilting as the lighting shifts subtly overhead. “The lights change,” she says. “They’re not static.”
“They follow the city’s day-night cycle,” I tell her.
“So you don’t lose track of time,” she says, like she’s cataloging the place more than questioning it.
“Right.”
She stops at the glass wall, pressing closer as she takes in the rows of plants. Her mouth parts despite herself.
“You’re growing food down here,” she says. “Actual food.”
“On rotation. Hydroponic.”
She laughs under her breath. “Of course you are. Let me guess. Fresh herbs. Vegetables. Probably better than whatever you’re eating upstairs.”
I don’t correct her.
She turns slowly, scanning. “So what else do you have? Let me guess. A dairy farm, a vineyard, and a woodworking studio.”
“Funny.”
She spots the theater next, eyebrows lifting. “Jesus. A wide-screen theater with recliners, too.”
“Nothing that connects to the internet,” I caution. “But my father built a catalog of hundreds of films to choose from.”
She snorts. “There’s naturally no internet. Can’t have your prisoner live-tweeting her captivity. But at least you aim to entertain.”
We move deeper into the space, past the seating area and along the far wall. I slow when we reach the pool, not stopping fully, just enough to draw her attention.
“That’s open to you,” I say. “Water’s filtered daily. Temperature stays consistent.”
She stops anyway, stepping closer to the edge, peering down into the blue like she’s measuring it.
“A pool,” she says. “Of course there is.”
“There’s a storage room off the hall,” I add. “Towels. Basics. There should be a swimsuit in your size. If not, I’ll have one brought in.”
She looks back at me then, something cautious flickering across her face. “You planned that?”
“I wanted to make sure you had what you need,” I reply. “Staying cooped up doesn’t do anyone favors.”
That earns a short breath of a laugh from her, gone almost as soon as it appears. She circles the pool once, slow, like she’s testing the perimeter rather than admiring it.
“And the sauna?” she asks, nodding toward the wood-paneled room beside it.
“Same rules,” I say. “Don’t try to dismantle anything. Don’t test the locks.”
I keep my injured hand still at my side as I say it.
“Disappointing,” she mutters. “I was really hoping for a dramatic escape through the steam.”
I don’t rise to it. I just keep walking, letting her fall back into step beside me.
She looks at me like she might ask something, then thinks better of it. I appreciate that more than I should.
In the kitchen, her attention sharpens.
“No knives,” she says. “I assume that’s intentional.”
“Very,” I reply. “I had the place cleared out.”
She nods, taking that in. “Comfort without risk.”
“You have a smart mouth on you.” It doesn’t irritate me the way it probably should. In fact, there is something about it, about her, that I like.
I push that thought aside.
“It smells good in here. Earthy,” she says as she takes a deep inhale.
The air down here stays consistent and clean. Basil from the garden cuts faintly through the recycled cool air. I don’t respond.
“So I can move around?” she asks.
“Yes, you have full use to the spaces down here. Theater, pool, sauna, all of the living spaces, of course. Well, except the office. But you don’t need anything in there, anyway.”
“And I can’t leave. You forgot that part.”
“No. Afraid not. But you should be comfortable here.”
She watches me for a moment. “Will someone be here with me?”
“For the most part. When I’m not, the space is locked down.”
She crosses her arms. “That’s not what I was asking. I was just curious.”
I let that pass.
“I have a question,” she says. “You hid me in the middle of nowhere, then you bring me here. A place everyone recognizes.”
I glance at her. “Is there a question in there?”
She gestures around us. “This house is famous and in the middle of a fairly large US city. Tours. Events. People coming and going. I don’t understand why this is safer than a cabin no one even knew existed.”
“Because no one knew about the cabin until they did,” I say. “Remote only works until it doesn’t.”
“So no one knows about this?” she presses.
“It’s a little different here,” I tell her. “No one is coming in here unless I let them in. The cabin had vulnerabilities.”
Her eyes move again, slower now, taking in the space with a different lens.
“Hidden in plain sight,” she says.
“Yes.”
She studies me for a beat. “So this isn’t where you usually keep your captives.”
“I don’t keep people,” I reply. “And my father never used this house for that.”
Her mouth tilts. “Mmm hmm.”
I turn back toward the living space. “Get comfortable. Your room is the second room down the hall.”
“For how long?” she calls after me.
“Until I say otherwise,” I reply, without turning around.
The Creston House settles into its evening rhythms before I step into the room on the main floor that was built for darker purposes long before my family owned it.
The room is hidden behind a bookcase and locked behind a safe-style door, complete with a dial lock. The heavy door swings shut behind me. The air in here is thick with history—some of it brutal, most of it dark.