THE ELDRIDGES
There are two kinds of rich people: those born into wealth and those who acquired it. From experience, I can tell you that the latter are by far the worse. Bad people exist in every class, of course, yet the self-made rich seem to attract them in the highest concentration. These are the reckless souls who will go to any length, pay any price, to amass obscene fortunes.
Before anyone accuses me of romanticising aristocracy, let me share the thoughts and observations that led me to this conclusion.
One can’t help but wonder how the most unworthy characters end up in sprawling mansions, driving supercars, and squandering fortunes on vulgar whims. Glossy magazines celebrate their “success,” parading photographs of their homes, their toys, their designer wardrobes. Television courts them for interviews and commercials, treating their faces as emblems of triumph, even though they rarely have a single insightful thing to say. The more the public talks about them, the clearer the truth becomes: what delivered their wealth wasn’t honest labour but cold calculation and the deliberate abandonment of decency. Once they catch the scent of money, their minds become intoxicated by it. The more they inhale, the more addicted and unstable they grow.
And then the transformation occurs. The moment they grow rich, they are suddenly recast as paragons of virtue. Whenever one of these figures appears in public, people fawn over them with an almost religious reverence. It’s grotesque. They may be barely educated, alcoholic, violent towards their wives, or estranged from their children — none of it matters. Such details are dismissed as trivial. All society cares about is that these people stand close to the god of money, and that some of its golden light might fall upon those nearby. We, who never approach that radiance, are complicit. By idolising them, we make them untouchable and allow them to escape justice. Were we to stop, their power would shrivel and their crimes would no longer go unpunished.
The scandals of the old aristocracy possess a certain morbid elegance. The self-made rich, by contrast, are predictable and tedious. They live in perpetual fear of losing the status they clawed their way to achieve. The old saying about the girl from the trailer park always proves true: no matter how rich or polished they become, their origins eventually show. They are only granted the status of “personalities” for as long as their money lasts. Strip it away, and it becomes painfully obvious they never had anything else to offer. Their crimes are therefore impulsive, crude, and easy to detect.
Old money, on the other hand, commits its sins with far greater refinement. Their transgressions are meticulously planned and expertly concealed, usually rooted in well-guarded family secrets and motives darker than most could imagine.
The Eldridges were one such family — dark aristocrats whose self-inflicted downfall unfolded in less than a century. They lived by the ocean, perched on a cliff that jutted into the water like the prow of a menacing ghost ship. Their mansion was a brutalist monstrosity built in the 1970s: a vast geometric structure balanced on a platform supported by thick concrete columns. Behind the house stretched a wide wooden terrace with a dry, covered pool that overlooked the endless sea.
There were only two ways in or out: a concrete stairwell at the front leading to the main entrance, and another at the rear of the terrace. No one could arrive or depart unnoticed by the staff or the cameras — and the cameras were installed less for security than for the family to spy on one another. Even without them, the house offered no real privacy. In an attempt to soften the oppressive concrete and steel, the architect had wrapped the building in floor-to-ceiling windows, turning it into a transparent box that exposed every movement of its residents to the outside world. Only at night, behind closed bedroom doors and drawn blinds, could they hide from each other. And there was much they all wished to hide.
By the end, only four Eldridges remained — four generations, four stages of decay. At the top was the widow, Griselda Eldridge. Below her sat her daughter-in-law, Glenn Eldridge, also widowed. Glenn and her late husband Howard Jr. had produced a son, Philip. The youngest was Jason, Philip’s boy. Terminal decadence ran through their veins like a hereditary disease. They lived together under one roof, like spiders trapped in a jar, each silently willing the others to die.
