My heart was pounding in my chest and I felt hot. I had never been in a car this fancy before. All sleek and black with so much room in the back we could have fit another 4 more girls. I hadn't seen my driver, and the divide was keeping them hidden, but about half way here I heard them cough and felt pretty safe to say it was a man.

I didn't want to be here, and my body was telling to run. To throw the door open and roll out onto the road and get up and start running and never stop. I looked at the smoothness under the window and instantly knew the car was locked from the outside.

I took a deep breath and tried to calm down, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans. They were old and worn out and had a few stains on there that weren't even mine and I tried not to think about where they came from. Most of my clothes were hand-me-downs or from a second hand shop. I didn't mind where they came from, a lot of my clothes were actually really nice and some even had the tags on them. People would wear their clothes once or twice, or sometimes not at all, before throwing them out to the second hand shop.

My family was in a really bad place. Although I was 18 and should be considering moving out and starting my own life, I couldn't leave my parents and brother. I couldn't even afford to leave if I had wanted to. My parents were once both doctors and lived a comfortable lifestyle, but then not long after my younger brother came along, a patient started accusing my dad of all kinds of things. Apparently my dad had broken his ribs giving him CPR, and then he had breathing problems because of it, and a sore neck, and then he was permanently disabled and emotionally scarred from the experience. This went on for months until all the hospital could do was fire my dad, even though there was no medical proof that the patient was hurt. Dad couldn't find work in his field again after that.

After my mum died of cancer when I was 10, I didn't think he wanted to go back into the medicine field anyways. What good was dedicating your life to medicine when it couldn't even save your wife, he used to say to us.

He now worked as a handyman, picking up work when he could. It was straining on his body but calming on his mind. He once told me when I asked why he was doing this, that he didn't have to think. He just did the job and came home. He didn't have to think about patients, he didn't have to think about saving lives, he didn't have to think about mum.

That was good for him, but not for our financial state. We went from living comfortably to living in a small 2 bedroom unit in a dodgy part of town. My brother and I picked up work when we could, waitering and any other small jobs while attending school to try and help out. I was 18 now and my brother Jeremy was 16 and would be 17 in a few months.

There was no way I could afford to go to college, but I so desperately wanted Jeremy to go. Even just to get dad into a better part of the town.

That's why I had said yes to this competition.

This town, Mystic falls, was very old and sat on a gold mine. The first family to found this place was the Salvatore's, who to this day, are easily the richest family around, probably the richest in the state, and would probably makes Forbes top 100 richest in America.

Mr and Mrs Salvatore had passed away 3 years ago, their fortune was passed onto their son, on one condition. He be married first. Now Stefan Salvatore was one of the best looking people I had ever seen, go figure, he had to be rich and good looking. But as the years ticked by, he didn't even look like he was dating let alone going to get married. In all fairness Stefan was only 20 years old, but still, that was a big fortune to put off.

Eventually this friends and relatives had had enough, and rumour has it, they forced him into this competition. I don't know how true that is, maybe they wanted him to appear more human and humble so more women would sign up. There was an announcement 6 months ago, the week after I had turned 18, saying that there was a competition being held, for any women within the State between the ages of 18 and 22. The winner would be married to Stefan Salvatore.

The town went crazy, no one knew if it was true or not until Stefan addressed the competition himself, saying that the time had come for him to settle down. All eligible women were welcomed to send in a photo and information sheet about themselves. That 100 women would be selected to attend a meet and greet with Stefan himself. From there, 100 would become 50, where the women were then sent to a weekend away trip to an unknown location with Stefan, where only 20 would go through to the next round, going back to his mansion in Mystic Falls. From there the girls would be dwindled down until one remained and she got to be the bride.

As a joke my friends and I signed up. Not to mention that anyone who made it through the first round into the 50, would instantly get $10,000. If you made it through to the next round of 20, you got another $10,000. Then of course if you won you got to be married into the richest family around.

The money was a big part of why I signed up. I didn't want to marry Stefan. I had never even considered not marrying for love. But if I could make it into the top 20, it would make the world of difference for my family.

Not that I ever thought I'd get in. Thousands of girls would be entering this competition, they wouldn't be looking at someone so plain as myself. With brown hair and brown eyes, I didn't exactly stand out. I wasn't curvy, I was flat in all the worst places. I was just plain. Not to mention they would take one look at my application and assume I was in it for the money once they looked into my life and where I lived.

So when I got the call to say I had been selected to be one of the 100 girls I couldn't believe it.

Now here I was, 3 days after that phone call, sitting in the back of a fancy car getting driven to the first location.

It was 7 o'clock in the morning, and I had only been told that I was to spend 3 hours getting my outfit picked, my make up and hair done and go through the introduction and rules, before we then got to spend the entire day with each other and Stefan Salvatore.

I was feeling really nervous considering I was probably going to be sent home tomorrow with the other 50 girls. But as the car came to a stop I couldn't help but think what if I wasn't.

My door was pulled open by one of the handsomest guys I had ever seen. He had dark brown floppy hair, intense, striking blue eyes, and a jawline for days. If this was the door guy, imagine what other good looking men were working in this place I thought to myself but shook my head. He opened his mouth and in a deep voice said, "Elena Gilbert. We're here".