Married To The Devil

Chapter Fourteen

D e v i l' s B u s i n e s s P a r t n e r

It was weird how a total stranger - at least to myself - had led Damon to me. It was even weirder how she knew my parents and they had never mentioned her to me. I had never seen her before or heard of her name so how could she have possibly known me, let alone lead a person to marry me? I mean, if she knew my parents at one point, it didn't have to mean that she knew me as well, right? For all I know, she might had known them and their connection to her was cut short before I was even born.

I blinked at Damon, while he ate his cupcake like he hadn't told me something that had just blown my head off course. I tipped my head to one side, watching him intensely while I couldn't speak for the life of me.

"What?" Damon finally snapped at me mid-bite, obviously unable to bare my heavy gaze on him anymore. "Why are you looking at me like I just told you that I've lived the past three years of my life on Neptune?"

"Because you just did?" I answered back, pursing my lips. "Or something as absurd as that."

"No," Damon said, putting down his cupcake between us on the bench, "I actually told you that Matilda led me to you. But you seem to have gone on a mind-freeze."

"And what does that mean?" I asked, again cocking my head to the other side.

"Mind-freeze?"

"No," I replied, "the part before that one."

"Well," Damon started, giving me a curt smile, "it means that if it weren't for Matilda I would have never known you."

I stared at Damon for a while longer and I couldn't blame him for going impatient at me this time. I didn't know what to think or say or anything. I had no idea why such a news shocked me into silence. Probably because I couldn't connect the dots together. I mean, Matilda knew my parents. Damon knew Matilda. Matilda told Damon about me. My parents never told me about Matilda. There was a missing link to the loop here and I couldn't quite put my finger on it because I had no idea what it might be, in the first place.

"You're cursing Matilda in your mind right now, aren't you?" Damon questioned, breaking me out of my stupor.

"No," I said, looking weirdly at him, "why would I?"

Damon smirked, glancing at me from the periphery of his eye, "because I said, if it weren't for her, I would have never known you."

"What the . . ." I started, my eyes widening as I understood the underlying meaning of what he just said. Damon thought I was cursing Matilda for leading him to me and now I wasn't sure if I had mistakened the mild tone of hurt in his voice when he asked. I didn't exactly like Damon in the beginning but that didn't mean that I would have been happier if he weren't in my life. He was getting all this wrong and that kind of worried me. "No," I blurted out, "God, no, Damon. I wasn't cursing her. I was just trying to understand how Matilda knew me but I didn't know her."

Damon shrugged and turned forward in his seat. "It was in a Masquerade Ball when I first saw you," he said, "Matilda said she knew your Mom."

"Masquerade Ball?" I repeated, racking my brain for a memory of a Masquerade Ball, only to find that there were plenty held once each year by different people. "Which one?"

"It was five years ago," Damon informed me and my jaw went slack. Great, people seem to know me without me even knowing them back. I wonder how much more people out there knew me while I didn't know them. Damon knew me since five years, for Pete's sake, while I only knew him for two months or so. Damon continued, "it was a ball that was thrown at the De La I-don't-remember-what grand mansion."