AN: So this is a big chapter guys. I had some inspiration from Gossip Girl and The Great Gatsby when I wrote it so you might find some things you would recognize. Thanks for the reviews and alerts from last time.
Have fun reading,
Mydarkside975
Chapter Three: The Great Salvatore
Elena
Tonight was the night. After days of worry, preparation, and secret lunch meetings (to get away from an eavesdropping Rebekah) they were finally on their way to the S. party, as they had dubbed it just in case someone was listening. It was surprisingly easy to get hired by the catering company considering their high-profile clientele but apparently the demand on their services was fast on the rise, thanks to the free advertising they got from their involvement with the S. parties.
They were driving to the mansion in Tyler's old Corona and the tension was high in the confined space. They were excited but at the same time worried, partly because what they were doing was not exactly legal but mostly because this was their chance to carve their paths in the highly competitive world of journalism and they could not afford to blow it. They spent most of the time sitting in silence with the car radio playing in the background so they were a bit startled when Caroline screamed "Oh My God, it's huge!"
In the distance, they could finally see the mansion; a white stone building with gigantic pillars and a front porch big enough to hold a couple of hundred people. The driveway was circular with a stone fountain in the middle. It looked like something from a fairy tale and yet felt off, like all those windows had witnessed some very dark times.
They were instructed to show up at the back entrance, so when they reached the main driveway, they drove past it and turned right to find a small driveway on the side of the mansion that led to the back entrance where there was a parking area for the caterers. The whole thing was surreal and Elena hated having to abide by their rules; like caterers with old cheap cars were somehow lesser people who therefore had to hide and come in through the back entrance. But she did it anyway, for her future.
Their job was to walk around among the guests serving drinks and canapés so they got to actually see the place, which was exactly what they wanted. When they were dressed in their black and white uniforms and each carrying their tray, the guests were starting to arrive and they got sent out to do their jobs. The mansion was even more impressive from the inside with high ceilings, marble floors and large open rooms with expensive looking paintings on the walls. It all screamed wealth. Elena felt little and unimportant carrying her tray and walking around the huge room like a part of the decor. She was certainly treated like that by the so-called guests who were dressed to the nines but all wore matching white masks that covered more than half their faces. She had no idea why they wore those obviously uncomfortable masks but the night was just starting and she expected to find out soon enough.
The room soon filled up and the trays were getting emptied faster. The guests were standing in groups and chatting, jazzy music playing in the background when the lights suddenly dimmed and several people wearing different colored costumes and carrying lanterns that matched their outfits filed into the room. The guests broke up in groups each following one of the lantern people to different parts of the mansion.
During the night Elena got to see what was happening in some of the rooms. She found out that the lantern people led the guests to different stations where they got to experience live performances like dramatic scenes, dance or just abstract performance art pieces. She recognized one or two professional Broadway actors (none of the performers wore masks) and knew it must have cost a fortune to hire all those people. From what she could make out, the performances were great and the guests were getting exponentially excited evident by their louder clapping at the end of every performance. Nevertheless Elena could not wait to get out of there as the extravagant feel of it all started to suffocate her.
Fortunately she soon got replaced by another caterer to go have her break. She immediately headed for a door to get some air. When she stepped outside, she found herself standing on the back porch facing a huge well-tended garden with a pool area as the center piece. Everything in this place was so big in an uncomfortable kind of lonely way that she missed their little apartment in Brooklyn. She took a deep breath trying to calm her nerves but a chill ran down her spine when someone spoke to her in a velvety deep voice.
"You seem tired."
She turned around and saw a guy leaning on the wall behind her. She could not make out his face in the darkness but he was not wearing a mask so she assumed he was one of the performers.
"I'm fine," she answered and leaned on a pillar next to her. She returned her gaze to the pool and the surrounding grounds that stretched on for miles.
"So what do you think?" He said after a pause.
"About what?" She said trying to avoid the question.
"About the party," he said unflinchingly.
"How do you know it is my first time?" She was starting to deflect but had no idea why she felt herself compelled to do that. Maybe she just did not want to hurt his feelings because he was a part of the entertainment, she thought.
"You look overwhelmed," he said.
"Well, you got me."
"So what do you think about it?" Man, that guy was persistent, she thought contemplating whether to tell him what he wanted to hear.
The air had an early spring kind of chill to it. It was refreshing. She watched the moonlight reflection in the dark water of the pool. "Honestly, I think it's an obnoxious show of excess by someone who's clearly lacking in the personal department," she burst out before she could stop herself. She took a deep breath and hoped he would not take it personally. She felt him move to stand next to her and they stood there in silence for a minute.
"Don't get me wrong, the performances are beautiful and the artists are great but the outrageous amount of money spent on one night, the impersonal feel of the huge mansion and the creepy white masks, set my teeth on edge."
She did not know why she just said all of that to a complete stranger but she had been keeping all of those thoughts inside and Caroline was nowhere to be found so the poor guy had to endure her rant. In her defense though, he was the one who kept asking.
"You think the masks are creepy?"
Seriously, that was the only point he wanted to address, she thought.
"Yeah, well what do you think?" She asked looking at the dark shape of his profile.
He hesitated for a moment. "I think that you might be judging someone too harshly even though you don't know him. Yes, he could be a self-absorbed ass but maybe he has his reasons."
Elena felt the heat rush to her face from the anger that started simmering in her veins. Who did he think he was to talk to her like that?
"Well of course you would defend him when he's the one paying you." She spit out failing to reign in her emotions.
At her words, he snapped his face and looked her right in the eyes. At that same moment, the lights inside the mansion were turned on and the beam of light landed on him, illuminating his face. Elena could not contain her gasp as she found herself staring into infinite blue eyes that nearly drowned her in their intensity.
"Well, I'm the one paying you and I think you should leave."
After he uttered those words she left. She left the porch and then she left the whole mansion heading to the Corona which they had agreed to leave unlocked in case something like this happened.
She could not believe how stupid, she was not to notice. She just had a whole conversation with The Damon Salvatore and he was every bit the entitled prick everyone thought he was. Yes, she had insulted him first but she really had no idea. What a stupid situation she had put herself in, she thought. She did not even last half the night and she was sure, she had blown her one chance. The material she had was a major scoop but it was not the kind of news that could make a career. She had no choice but to get back in there.
The fact that Damon Salvatore had already seen her and thrown her out left her in a bit of a pickle. She could not get in there and risk him seeing her again and she was sure that he wore a mask among his guests so no one would recognize him, which made it even harder to avoid him. That left her with one solution. She had to go in there as a guest so she could wear one of those hideous masks and stay anonymous.
She already knew where they kept the masks so she quickly changed back into her simple black dress (Their boss had required them to show up in formal-wear even though they would change into uniforms anyway.), let her hair down and borrowed Caroline's red lipstick. She reentered the mansion, found a mask and slipped it on before anyone noticed then she went back into the main room.
Damon
He did not know what made him talk to her. He had been drinking but not nearly enough to make him lose his head, yet he did the one thing he wanted to avoid; he showed her his face. She seemed different when he first saw her standing there in her black and white uniform. Maybe the fact that she was not one of those overly made up, desperate women drew him in. She was beautiful with her doe eyes and olive skin, she seemed pure, not yet ruined by the filthy world around her.
Something made him want to hear her thoughts on his party, maybe even him, even though he did not know her name. So he asked her, maybe hoping to hear something he did not already know, but she ended up being just as bad as the others, judging him based on some bullshit made up by the media and people who were jealous of his fortune. If they only knew how "fortunate" he really was. But if people already thought he was an ass, he really had no interest in changing their minds and might as well act like it, he thought.
He was standing at the top of the stairs when the light dimmed for the second half of the evening and out, came the girls… and guys, who was he to discriminate? Yeah, so the first half was the pretty part. Now it was time for the down and dirty. He could feel the atmosphere rising and he sucked it all in. This was his favorite part of the evening. The first part was just to draw them in and rile them up. Now he got to see them let go. With the promise of anonymity, they would let go of all pretenses and be their true selves and he had them dancing to his tune… literally… and metaphorically. The complete control he had over those people and their eagerness to swallow whatever he gave them be it food, drinks or sex, gave him this perverted sense of euphoria and he strived for it.
He was watching them for a while when a blond girl with black barely-there lingerie caught his eye. He decided that she would be his first companion of the night.
Elena
She saw it all. She was standing in the corner trying to be inconspicuous when she saw him. He was standing at the top of the stairs watching his guests. She could only interpret the look on his face as contempt.
When the light dimmed for the second time, she had no idea what she was about to witness. Iron cages were wheeled out with one male or female stripper inside each, dancing on a single pole. The guests were elated and she could feel the energy rising in the room. The music was something loud and rhythmic instead of the quiet jazz from before. She could not see a single caterer and everyone was wearing the masks. It was like the first half of the night never existed.
A couple of minutes later, escorts in scarce clothing flooded the place and the highly respected and well-mannered members of society were reduced to a writhing mass of lust and greed. She finally understood the point of the masks. He wanted to tear down the glossy façade and see the actual people behind. Ironically enough, they could only let go of their inhibitions and be who they really were if they wore a mask to hide their faces and identities.
He was watching the whole thing from the top of the stairs for some time before he put on his own mask and descended the stairs to join them. That was when she decided that she had seen enough of this madness and needed to return back to the real world.
When she reached the Corona, she found Tyler and Caroline already there. She hurried into the backseat trying to get this night over with as fast as possible.
"Ohmygod! Elena wasn'titjustcrazy… Weweresoworriedaboutyou… whyareyouholdingamask?" Caroline screeched the moment Elena landed on her seat.
"Wow, slow down, Care. I didn't get half of what you said there," she said looking at her usually energetic but not this crazy-neurotic friend.
"What's wrong with her?" She mouthed now looking at Tyler for an explanation.
"Well, she kindda ate some of the canapés and apparently there's something in them," he said.
"What do you mean; there's something in them, like what?" She said starting to panic when Caroline just kept on talking like she could not hear them.
"It looks like crack," he said with a shrug.
"Are you saying, Caroline is on Cocaine and you're just sitting here? We need to take her to the hospital!" She said now in full panic mode
"Relax, Elena. She'll be fine once she sleeps it off," he said starting the car and speeding down the driveway towards the road.
AN: I'm very excited to hear your thoughts.