No Roses For Your Bones

by Kiryki

When Tyler Lockwood—Federal Agent and Caroline's ex-boyfriend—walked into the Mikaelson mafia family bar, Caroline knew it was going to be the beginning of a really obnoxious joke. He wasn't content to let the past rest, though, and soon what he thinks he knows blows the dust off the skeletons they had long buried.

A/N: I have been very lazy about transferring this fic over to from AO3 because it is a mafia/social media fic that has pictures in it. Really you're better off reading it there if you have an account (username: kirythestitchwitch), but I have done my best to describe everything and write out the text chats. Hope you enjoy!

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No Roses For Your Bones

There was something very soothing about putting the bar to rights at the end of her current weekly night at Talbot's, Caroline thought as she ran the mop across the floor. Glasses washed and put up, counters scrubbed clean, the tables topped with chairs, a small labyrinth for her to maneuver around. The soft croon of the pub playlist she was constantly reorganizing played over the speakers, turned down to fill the room with a background hum that was relaxing after the loud din of the night. It made the front door creaking open stand out, as did the sharp tread of the accompanying footsteps on the worn wood floors.

"Bar's closed," she called, glancing up at the man that stopped at the end of the bar, a manila folder clutched in one hand. A sharp breath caught in her throat, and her hands paused on the mop. He was familiar, black hair brushed back, and a suit that screamed Fed at a hundred paces for all his former wealth. Caroline remembered seeing the back of a suit much like it when he'd chosen to walk away from her. It was comforting to find that that memory didn't sting the way it had once.

"Can't imagine you have much business here, Tyler Lockwood." Leaning on the mop handle, she tilted her head at him. "I hear the last time you darkened that doorway, you were told to come back with a warrant." Kol delighted in acting out the part where they tossed him out on the pavement.

His fist clenched in a sign of tension. "Caroline, we have to talk. It's about Klaus."

Ah.

"Aren't most things, with you?" she sighed. Picking up the mop, she dunked it back into the bucket and leaned it to the side. "Come on, have a drink with me, for old time's sake. Surely you're off the clock?" Sliding back behind the bar, she snagged a bottle of bourbon off the bottom shelf, along with two rocks glasses. Setting the glasses down, she poured a four-count in each before pushing one at Tyler. Plunking the bottle down and leaning on the counter, she took an appreciative sip from her glass.

Tyler hesitated a second, before sitting down at the bar and wrapping a hand around his glass. With a sharp jerk of his hand, he tossed the entire contents of the glass back and set it back down. The folder was left set to the side. Caroline ignored it; she would probably be seeing the contents before the night was out.

"You know, when he exhorted that date out of you, I never thought you'd end up marrying the ass." His voice was a low growl, and he glared resentfully at the bottle of bourbon.

Caroline smiled to herself, a hand dipping to the chain around her neck where she kept her wedding rings while she was working. "So you've heard." Tyler spent his life with a parabolic microphone aimed futilely at the bar and a junior agent of his assigned to monitoring the Mikaelson's social media accounts; it was a certainty that he would.

Tyler shoved a hand into an inner pocket of his suit jacket, and pulled out a slightly crumpled photograph, slapping it down on the counter. Klaus and Caroline in the photo smiled at each other sweetly, one of the staged photos the photographer insisted on. It could have been worse, Caroline thought, cheeks going slightly warm, he could have had one of the photos right after this where Klaus whispered in detail what his plans were for her lacy underthings, and the photographer had kept asking if she was getting over-heated. There was something illicit about those pictures; Kol had tried to steal one for his s, and Klaus was looking a little murderous around the edges when he came back with the print.

Kol was nearly done healing and clearly hadn't learned a single lesson, judging by the way he'd been sniffing around the wedding photos over breakfast.

"That was left in my work locker this morning," Tyler said bitterly. "I wasn't aware your husband's reach was so extensive."

Caroline smoothed the edges of the photo, already curling from rough use. "Klaus wanted to send you an invitation, but it was our special day after all, and I didn't think you would behave."

"Like I would have gone," Tyler scoffed, like a liar. Oh yeah, Bonnie was right, bullet dodged there.

"Honestly, I expected you in here when Kol blabbed his big mouth all over social media. Or maybe after the cake-tasting episode? Definitely after Bekah's bachelorette party Insta stories." She sipped her drink, feeling the warmth of the bourbon in her chest.

"I thought they were all just messing with me, I thought there was no way you'd go through with marrying scum like him."

"Tyler, I was in every video. Why would I fake being in love with Klaus?" she said in exasperation. God, it was going to take forever for him to get to the point, wasn't it?

He flinched. "I just don't get it!" he exclaimed, grabbing the bottle and pouring a couple fingers into his glass. A good gulp was taken out of the contents, and it looked like it burned going down, judging by the grimace on his face. "You were there in the beginning, you know Jenna died in the crossfire of that shit. Your dad died. Elena was your best friend and—"

Caroline scoffed at the idea of Elena seeing her as a best friend. She remembered the rolled eyes, the tolerant glances. "Like Elena didn't drag that shit into our lives by falling in with the fucking Salvatore brothers? She knew they were bad news but," she clasped her hands to the side and fluttered her eyelashes, "she loved them both and her epic romance was going to triumph over all. And my dad started a war when his drive-by killed Henrick." A disgusted huff left Caroline's mouth as she went back to her glass, spinning it slowly on the wooden bar top.

"So what makes you any different from Elena, fucking a crime lord?" Tyler asked crudely. "That's fuckin' hypocritical." His face looked like it was struggling to keep from sneering at her.

Rolling her eyes, Caroline huffed. "I mean, I haven't started any gang wars with my coochie recently, but okay. Why does Elena get a free pass on her selfish decisions, but mine need to be strung up before a grand jury?" She noted they were not talking about her father.

"Because he's a criminal, Caroline." An almost manic look washed over his face. "After what he did to my mom… Not to mention he's a gun runner with his fingers in too many illegal activities to count, and that's all going to catch up to him soon."

Grabbing the bottle, she put it back on the shelf. He'd had enough. "Supposition and hearsay, seriously? Do you actually have a point to this charming chat? Because I have a bar to finish cleaning." Propping a hand on her hip, she glared at Tyler.

Staring into the middle distance, Tyler seemed to come to a decision. He downed the last of his drink and set the glass aside. One hand landed on the folder and tapped it with a finger.

"You know, it's not a good look to take gifts from crime lords."

Finally, here we go. "You'd know all about that since you didn't seem to mind taking his favors until the first time he asked for one himself."

"There's no proof of that," Tyler said hurriedly. "The bank said so."

Caroline raised her eyebrows but didn't comment. If he was going to be that willfully naive, then she wasn't going to enlighten him.

"However," he continued, seeming to gather a magician's aura around him for a grand reveal, "I do have evidence of you taking especially expensive bribes from Klaus Mikaelson while we were dating."

"So you are still mad about the drawing," she murmured. Tyler finding a drawing Klaus had made for her in her jewelry box had kicked off the final argument that had led to their breakup.

"What's he doing drawing you, Care?" Tyler shouted when she'd gotten home that night, him looking rumpled in his shirtsleeves. "It's bad enough he's leaving you a king's ransom in diamonds—"

"Which the last time I saw them were flying towards his head," she interjected, throwing her purse down on the couch in frustration.

"—And you're all over their social media, but now he's drawing you? I bet he's got some creepy little art room filled with paintings of your face or something."

Caroline opened her mouth to answer and paused, remembering some specific sketches in a gallery, months ago. "Okay, actually, that one's fairly likely."

"Jesus," he hissed, "And that doesn't freak you out? The mass murderer doing detailed sketches of your feet?"

She rolled her eyes at that, heading into the bedroom of their small apartment, Tyler dogging her footsteps. "I mean, Klaus is kind of—"

"Homicidal!"

"—Intense, but I dunno, it was… sweet. Better than diamonds, in my opinion," she shrugged, taking her earrings off and tucking them back in her jewelry box. It wasn't just to check that her drawing was still there, she told herself firmly. It was, and she let out a slow breath, ruining that conviction thoroughly.

"And what's with that 'Thank you for your honesty,' shit? What did you tell him?" The suspicion that settled on his face was vastly unwarranted, and it rankled.

Crossing her arms over her chest, annoyed and no small bit offended, she glared at him. "I made some choice comments about what I thought about him trying to buy my loyalty. Like I'm some lackey. Which is about when the diamonds were thrown, again, at his head. Tyler, this was months ago."

That Klaus had once tried to bribe her was something she never let him often forget in their daily texts. For what had started as Klaus' permanent attempt to collect a debt in Tyler's name, their path to something weirdly like a friendship had been accordingly bumpy at times. Now, debating the merits of Caroline's favorite garbage tv shows was a nightly occasion. Not that Tyler knew about that.

"You didn't tell him anything about my case?" he'd demanded.

"Oh my god, no." Caroline threw up her hands. "What would I tell him, that you have a serious hate boner for him and think he murders baby orphans? Trust me, he knows."

"I don't know what he knows, you wouldn't wear a wire—"

"That's illegal wiretapping, Tyler."

"—To that stupid ball—"

"That you wanted me to attend to snoop around! Again, illegally!"

" —Or the gallery. You keep hanging out with those psycho siblings of his, to the point where there are Buzzfeed listicles about 'Top Ten Klaroline Moments' on Kol's stupid show—"

She pressed her fingertips to the pressure points in her forehead, feeling an incoming headache. "I have no control over what some tin hat weirdos post on the internet."

"—And now my girlfriend is hiding love notes from a mob boss like a dirty secret. What am I supposed to think, Caroline?" He slammed his hand down on the dresser top with a loud bang. The petty show of intimidation lit a fire under her temper, and Caroline practically snarled at him.

"I would hope you wouldn't think I'm informing on my boyfriend to the mob for some shiny rocks, Tyler. What were you even looking for in there, huh? You certainly didn't put any of your little bugs in my jewelry box," she said spitefully.

He froze. "What bugs?"

Caroline went to her closet and dug out the little travel zip bag filled with listening devices. Chucking it at him, he caught it on reflex. He unzipped the bag and peered in, his face growing stormy.

"What'd you remove all of them for?" he practically growled.

Flinging her hands out like 'duh,' Caroline's face reflected the same. "Because that was a huge violation of my trust! I can't believe you did that! They were in my purses, in my clothes, you had to have had resources to sew them in without me noticing. Which means you got a warrant. Like I'm a suspect."

Tyler clamped his mouth together and said nothing, although he flushed a guilty red. The silence stretched on, damning.

"So this relationship is a lot more broken than I thought." Heaving what was nearly a sob, she had to fight back angry tears.

"Yeah." Clenching his fist around the bag of bugs, he stared flinty-eyed at her jewelry box. "I guess it is." Caroline gaped at him.

"Well, do you even want to fix it?" she said softly. Caroline had to wonder if she even did, to be honest. Things had been good once before he'd let his obsession take over. Before Caroline refused to drop her friends. Before he'd gone off the rails and bugged their whole apartment.

He stood there for a minute, before turning back to the living room, snatching up his suit jacket, and swinging it on. "I'm going to work. You do what you want, you're apparently doing it already."

Jerking back like she'd been slapped, Caroline balled her hands into fists. "You walk out, and I'm done." She was proud of how even her voice sounded.

Tyler paused at the door, hand on the doorknob, before opening it and letting the door slam behind him.

She packed up a bag that night and went to stay on Enzo's couch. When Kol opened the door on her red face—angry crying in the car to the first trashy breakup playlist that looked promising really was therapeutic—in his underpants, Caroline threw out any hope of this not getting back to Klaus in less than an hour.

"Can you just not tell him I broke up with Tyler?" Caroline groaned before he could say a word. There were some things he would keep from his brother, but one look at his face told her this would not be one of them.

He took in her obviously tear-blotched face and stuffed duffle bag with a blink, before pulling her into the apartment. "Not tell my dear brother that the love of his sad little life has broken things off with the yapping puppy that keeps trying increasingly outlandish ways to GPS tag his Maserati? As if he uses anything but the Mercedes for business." He paused in settling her on the couch while she raised her eyebrows at him. "Anyways, the answer is no. Where is my phone?" He darted down the hall, hollering, "Enzo, darling, Caroline is here!"

Enzo had quite emotionally gratifyingly yet impractically wanted to find Tyler and punch him in the face. He at least had thrown on joggers and a t-shirt for plying Caroline with ice cream and alcohol, while Kol continued to lounge about in his boxers. Glaring at Kol while he gleefully messaged someone on his phone—sound on like a heathen, so she could hear the rapid-fire pings—did absolutely nothing to deter him, and she dreaded the messages she anticipated finding on her phone.

"I just need to find a new place and get my stuff and get out," she said, tossing back a shot.

"A case could be made for throwing his things on the sidewalk and setting them on fire," Kol suggested helpfully.

Caroline's alcohol-muddled brain considered it for a few moments, imagining his polyester suits melting into a puddle on the concrete. "The fire department might have something to say about that."

Kol peeked over his phone at her. "I know someone who could make a call if you require catharsis."

"Absolutely do not," she pointed an unsteady finger at him, "Do not call your brother."

He pursed his lips and then nodded. "I will not call my brother."

"Thank you." She was too liquor-addled to see that for the trap it was. Morning came too early and a pounding on the front door pried her off the couch since Enzo had long left for a job—it was never a good idea to ask what kind; Kol had disappeared around two am, muttering about kerosene. Yanking open the door revealed the somewhat confusing sight of Rebekah looking every inch of her pristine socialite persona, carrying a garment bag and a to-go tray with two coffees.

"Well." She pursed her lips in a way that reminded Caroline horribly of Kol the previous night. "Don't you look hungover."

"Can I help you, Rebekah?" Caroline asked with as much dignity as she could manage, feeling the pillow creases on her cheek and her stomach threatening to revolt.

"Unlikely, but I am here to help you." Rebekah pushed past her and tossed the garment bag over the back of the couch.

Caroline shut the door with a sigh. "Yes, do come in. Make yourself at home."

Pulling a coffee off the tray, Bekah shoved it in Caroline's direction. "Oh, don't be cross, or I'll keep the caffeine to myself."

"No! No." Snatching the paper cup out of her hands, Caroline peeled back the lid and sniffed the contents appreciatively. A large swallow of the overly sugared contents went a long way towards improving her outlook on the morning.

"So not that I don't love a," she squinted at the kitchen clock visible through the doorway, "Eight am coffee delivery, but what are you doing here?"

Rebekah tossed the empty tray onto the coffee table and took a sip from her own cup. "Isn't it obvious? We're going shopping."

Cup halfway to her mouth, Caroline had frozen. "Shopping?"

"You need a new apartment," Rebekah said like this was obvious, "And I happen to know a couple of buildings with nice places in your price range."

Caroline looked suspiciously at her. "How do you know what's in my price range? And this isn't like a Favor favor, is it?"

"Wouldn't dream of it." Rebekah ignored the first question and tapped her well-manicured fingers against the side of her cup. "Kol just happened to mention that you were distressed last night and Bonnie was upset you didn't call her."

Ah, Bekah was taking it deeply personally that Caroline had upset the woman she was dating, Caroline's own best friend. And possibly under fifteen layers of bitch taking it a teensy bit personally Caroline hadn't texted her last night.

With a groan, Caroline had sagged her head. "You had a date last night and I didn't want to ruin it with Tyler. I swear I was going to call you both this morning."

Smiling at the mention of her date, Rebekah seemed to relax. "Well, she has an early Zoom meeting, but she's going to meet us for lunch, so you may make your apologies to her then." Scooping up the garment bag by the hanger, she thrust it at Caroline. "Now hurry up, you have an hour and a half before our first appointment."

Caroline took the bag on reflex and nearly dropped it. It was heavier than it looked. "What's this?"

"Do you want to look like you spent the night drinking away whatever emotions you held for that tepid little worm, or do you want to look fabulous for our Insta stories today?" Bekah had asked impatiently before her tone turned wheedling. "You know how much Tyler likes to watch our social media."

How like Rebekah to hand her an emotional knife to wield instead of sympathy. And it would absolutely do the trick: Caroline being seen out and about with Klaus' sister the morning after their breakup would probably make Tyler furious. He'd probably feel self-righteous and justified.

But he'd still be wrong. No matter what feelings of attraction she'd felt for Klaus, she'd been faithful. Tyler chose to walk out that door, and now she didn't owe him anything.

Caroline lifted her chin. "In forty-five minutes, I will be stunning."

Rebekah smiled, a savage little thing of satisfaction. "There's that bitch, I was wondering where she was hiding."

True to her word, Caroline sailed out of the bathroom in forty-three minutes, hair curled, lashes on, and heels high. The garment bag had contained the cutest Gucci floral sundress paired with some pink Alexandre Birman heels and a Prada clutch to match. She had almost refused based on the price estimation—the tags were conspicuously all missing—she had done in her head, but Rebekah could probably dig the cost of these out of the spare change in her couch if she deigned to do something as pedestrian as cleaning.

Rebekah looked extremely satisfied when Caroline made her appearance. "No grandma cardigans I'm afraid, but it is May, a tan would do you some good, darling," she sniffed.

"I don't tan," she said dryly in return, shoving the most necessary contents of her purse into her new clutch and disconnecting her phone from the charger.

"What do you mean, 'You don't tan?'" Rebekah blinked while prying herself from the grasp of Enzo's couch.

Caroline shrugged. "Just that. I don't tan. I get lobster red in the sun and then my skin peels off like a reptile and in a week I go back to being pale." Scooping Enzo's spare key out of the bowl by the front door, Caroline gestured a disgusted looking Bekah toward the door.

"Gross. Can we at all possibility avoid that?" Rebekah's heels clicked down the walk to the waiting town car, and Caroline locked up and followed her.

"Don't worry, I've got, like, SPF 1,000,000 on. Makes me smell like a coconut all summer." Caroline noted with some amusement that Rebekah made her walk around to the far side to get in, because scooting over was for peasants, apparently.

Leaning over to take a slight sniff in her direction, Rebekah made a small noise. "God, that makes me want a piña colada. I'm demanding Mexican for lunch. Anyway," she leaned forward in her seat and addressed the young man sitting in the driver's seat, "Saint Vincent's Apartments." He nodded and put the car in gear.

Leaning back against the seat as they drove away from the curb, Rebekah pulled out her phone and started tapping out a message. "Now would you please check your messages?" she asked pointedly before pretending to forget Caroline was there.

With a sigh, Caroline fished her phone from her purse and unlocked the screen. Seventeen messages from Bonnie, each increasingly more specific about the bodily harm she was prepared to inflict on "certain assholes." With a wince, Caroline typed out a quick message.

[8:53 AM]

Caroline: Will tell all at lunch!

Bonnie: You better. D: 3

She greatly sympathized with Klaus' continual threats to stab Kol in the liver when she saw the message he'd left before she'd even been awake.

[8:57 AM]

Kol: :)

Caroline: Did you have to call Rebekah?

Kol: You said not to call my brother! I did not call any of my brothers.

Caroline: I will make your death look like an accident :)

Kol: You and Nik are perfect for each other, please just marry him and put him out of our misery

A blush crept up Caroline's face, and she resolutely stared out the window until the slightly guilty squirmy feeling in her stomach had passed. Tyler had chosen his vendetta instead of staying and fixing things. She didn't need to feel guilty anymore for feeling that kinetic pull towards Klaus, that feeling that it could be so easy to fall, she told herself resolutely. Stuffing it down had become second nature, she'd never allowed herself to cross that emotional line, even though they were something like friends now. It was clear he wanted more and while he respected her rules while she wasn't single, she wasn't sure he wouldn't immediately pursue her with single-minded focus.

[9:02 AM]

Caroline: I don't accept marriage proposals by proxy no-way-emoji

Kol: He has to do it in person then? I'll let him know

Caroline: DO NOT!

With a huff, Caroline opened the last of her texts, one from last night.

Klaus: Regretful for him that Tyler allowed his insecurities to come between you; as I've said loyalty such as yours is rare. Small-minded men that do not value the queens they court are bound to let them slip through their fingers. Do let me know if there's anything I can do to assist. Light such as yours should not be dimmed.

"Fuck," Caroline muttered, face practically glowing.

Rebekah looked up from her phone, eyebrows twitching down in a frown. "What? Why is your face like that? Are you sunburned already?"

"No!" Shifting uncomfortably, Caroline tilted her phone just slightly away from her companion's view. "No, I think Klaus just offered to murder Tyler for being an ass."

"Oh, that." Rebekah's voice was dismissive. "He's been threatening to do that for months. He must be practically giddy that he might get the chance."

"Ugh, if I want him dead, I'll do it myself." Caroline rolled her eyes. "What I want is an emotional restraining order. He and his bullshit can stay three-hundred feet away from me at all times."

With a nod, Bekah returned to her phone. "Noted."

At least she waited twenty seconds to text her brother, Caroline thought, watching her out of the corner of her eye. That was more restraint than Kol had.

Looking back down at her screen, Caroline felt that fluttery little glow again. The dangerous thing about Klaus' brand of flirting is that he was just so damn sincere about it. Cheesy, but sincere.

[9:15 AM]

Caroline: Thank you 3 That's really gratifying to hear after last night. Honestly I just want to move on with my life

She barely had time to fret over the heart—too much?—before the little bubble of someone typing popped up. Klaus' answer came quickly, and she swallowed.

Klaus: I am a patient man, I will wait for however long it takes.

Did he mean however long it took for her to ask for Tyler's head, or however long it took for her to move on? Ugh, knowing the king of double meanings, probably both. What could she even say to that? Everything felt so inadequate.

The car pulling up in front of a nice looking apartment building jolted her from her musing, and she quickly tapped out a message that wouldn't leave him on read after that declaration.

Caroline: 3

Caroline: Rebekah's Apartmentpalooza is about to start. Ts and Ps praying-hands-emoji

Locking her phone quickly, she shoved it in her purse. She would deal with Klaus and his heady proclamations later. Getting out of the car, she squinted up at the several story building. This was a nice area. She made good money as an event manager for The Drake Hotel, but she might need a roommate for this place.

"This is in my price range?" she asked Bekah, joining her on the sidewalk.

"I had to guess a little with your budget, but quite a few places are having Spring deals right now. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised." Rebekah's face radiated a smug satisfaction as she led the way inside.

The next four hours were filled with tour after tour of lovely apartments with impressive kitchens, wood floors, and increasingly palatial bathrooms, all for suspiciously reasonable prices. Rebekah took tour videos of each of them, heavily featuring Caroline, and slapped the stories on Instagram with polls speculating on her possible single status, reasons for the breakup, and at the end, a House Hunters'esque one for which apartment she should pick.

[An Instagram post by Rebekah Mikaelson at 10:04 AM. The photo is a white apartment nook with a white table surrounded by two pink chairs. In the background is a gray bench with two yellow throw pillows. On the photo is pink text that says, "Caroline's sudden need for a new apartment is because A. Rejoice internet, she's single! B. She got a raise! C. Old apartment was haunted!" The post description asks the viewer to tell Rebekah your theories in the comments. There are a lot of comments and views.]

Caroline, as always on a Mikaelson social media post, was great for the views. Ever since Kol's first video featuring her at the Mikaelson bar, there was an entire subsection of the internet that vocally shipped Klaus and her. Her own now aggressively followed Instagram account was filled with questions and speculation on her bathroom selfie from this morning, and finally, Caroline had to shut its notifications off. If the Klaroline truthers wanted to spout conjecture, they could do it quietly.

At the fourth place on Rebekah's well-curated list, Caroline fell in love with the jacuzzi tub in the bathroom, and the many built-ins that offered both great storage and architectural charm. She walked out to the apartment manager ready to haggle, only to be flabbergasted by an even lower price than she had been prepared to offer.

"Sounds sus, what's the catch?" Caroline had asked the woman skeptically. She eyed Rebekah, who was ignoring her in favor of her phone.

The manager smiled. "It's our spring tenancy drive, really it's the best time to move in."

If she and Bekah were in cahoots, neither of them were saying a word. It was with ill grace Caroline signed the papers, but sign she did. The bathroom really was too good to pass up.

"Will you at least allow me to lend you several extremely buff movers to pack up and deliver your stuff tomorrow?" Rebekah pleaded as they sat down to lunch. She had indeed gotten her way, and they were tucked in a corner booth of a little Mexican restaurant Bekah insisted had divine tacos.

"You can get it done in one morning and never have to see Tyler's face again," she continued to cajole. Caroline doubted she'd be that lucky, considering the probable trajectory of her life—and she was just going to quit that thought while she was ahead. She took a sip of her water and tried not to choke when Bekah added breezily, "Also, it will annoy Nik."

"Unlike you, I do not live to annoy your brother," she coughed.

Bekah shot her a conspiratorial look. "No? But it's such fun, isn't it?" Caroline huffed, her lips twitching in an unwilling smile, but her answer was cut off by Bonnie's arrival.

"Care!" She threw herself into the booth next to Caroline and immediately wrapped her in a big hug. "What happened? Do I need to email his boss his browser history? Curse him with impotence? "

"One would think he's managing that one well enough on his own." Rebekah took a bite of chip and salsa. "I can't imagine there's a line."

With a laugh, Bonnie released Caroline and shot Bekah a blinding smile and a blown kiss. Caroline was delighted to see Rebekah's normal facade of bored disinterest crumble entirely and a rosy glow dusted her cheeks in the face of Bonnie's approval.

"Well, there certainly wasn't a lot of queuing recently," Caroline muttered. She knew the entire Mikaelson family wasn't fond on principle of the FBI agent investigating the lot of them for organized crime activity, but it was enormously gratifying to have more people in her life now that wholeheartedly supported her. Enzo and Bonnie were ride or die for her already, and after a surreal few months of having her life invaded by three of the Mikaelsons, she was getting the feeling that she'd been forcibly adopted.

It honestly wasn't horrible.

"First of all: gross. Secondly: please allow me to chime in with everyone else and say good fucking riddance to Tyler, I hope the door knocks him unconscious in the street on the way out," Bonnie said, patting Caroline's hand and peering at the menu.

"He certainly slammed it hard enough," Caroline said bitterly. Despite her being unable to look in Bekah's direction when she relayed Tyler's accusations regarding Klaus, Caroline detailed the fight for both girls, pausing only to put their orders in and when the food came. They had both sworn vehemently when Caroline mentioned the bugs, and Bonnie changed up her offer of dumping Tyler's browser history on his boss to dropping his falsified warrant paperwork in his email inbox, but Caroline reiterated her desire for an emotional restraining order. Bekah and Bonnie kept exchanging glances, and Caroline guessed they'd had many a conversation about her romantic life.

"What an insecure little twat." Bekah scoffed at the end. "Although I do find it quite interesting that this all was sparked by an unsigned sketch that just exuded his yearning energy. Nik doesn't give out his little doodles to anyone, barring that passable little piece he donated to the MCA." If someone wanted a Klaus Mikaelson Original, they had to pay through the nose to get it at one of his rare gallery showings. Or be owed a massive apology.

Their waitress stopped by their table to make sure everything was good, and Bonnie leaned in intently. "Please bring my friend your finest margarita. She just left a man who did not deserve her, and she needs to celebrate."

With a grin, the waitress rushed off. Caroline shot Bonnie a look. "It is," she checked her phone, "1:36 on a Wednesday, I do not need tequila." There was a new message from Klaus and she itched to read it.

"Yes, you absolutely do. This is not last night's Sad-fest, this is in memorialization of you finally dodging a bullet. A very slow, very stupid bullet." Bonnie made a face as she took a bite of her taco salad, and Caroline huffed.

"Fine, I will have one," she held up one finger, "Margarita, and then I am done with alcohol for a week. And you," she rounded on Rebekah, "What do you mean 'He doesn't give his doodles out to anyone?'"

Rebekah smiled a pleased little smile. "Well, he doesn't. You'd think that would be an excellent way to pick up women, that whole broody artist thing draws them in like crazy, you've seen it. But he never capitalizes on it, and no one's allowed in his studio." She eyed Caroline knowingly. "By the way, did I happen to see you disappear in there with Nik at the ball for a little while? That was you, right?"

With her fork, Caroline pushed some beans around on her plate. "There are a lot of rooms in your house, I'm not sure which one it was," she deflected.

"God yes, Elijah owes me a week at the Côtes d'Armor summer house," Bekah crowed, digging her phone out of her purse. "'She's not that important, Rebekah. Niklaus will tire of her quickly,'" she quoted in Elijah's overly stuffy tones and Caroline was distracted from her usual dislike for her least favorite Mikaelson by Rebekah's glee. "In. The. Studio! Bonnie, what do you say to France in June?"

"Heck yeah," Bonnie said, while Caroline sputtered.

"Are you betting on my love life?"

Bekah glanced up at her mid-typing. "I find it very interesting you characterize your relationship with my favorite brother as a 'love life.' Should I delay our June plans for the wedding?"

Staring up at the ceiling, Caroline searched the heavens for a single scrap of patience. "If I could put you on a plane this minute, I would. By all means, go."

Cackling to herself, Rebekah finished her typing and set down her phone, dug back into her lunch. The waitress came back with a margarita containing the smoothest tequila Caroline had ever tasted, and she bullied Bekah into helping her finish it, since Bonnie had to get back to work. The picture they took at the end of lunch, all three of them squashed together in the booth with laughter on their bright faces was one of Bekah's most liked ever.

Later in the car on the way back to Enzo's, Caroline set it as her new lock screen, feeling like she'd been scrubbed clean of a miasma that had clung to her for too long. The fights and the long nights with Tyler on some obsessive stakeout really had been going on and increasing in frequency for months until it felt like she was the only person in the relationship anymore. Time to move on.

"To answer your question from like, forever ago, yes, I would love for you to lend me some very buff people to help me move tomorrow." Caroline rested her head on Bekah's shoulder. The normal credit check hadn't taken long, and her new place was happy to hand over her keys immediately. She was feeling pretty hashtag blessed. "Ugh, I have to rent a U-haul, buy boxes, find my tape," she said, already drawing up a list in her head.

"Don't be crass, we have a moving van and supplies. Just meet them at 9 at your old place." Rebekah stressed old with a certain amount of glee.

The car pulled up in front of Enzo's little townhome, and they sat there for a second while the driver politely opened the door for her.

"Thank you for everything, Rebekah, you were great—" Caroline started before she was quickly interrupted.

"Ugh, gross, you're not welcome. Get out!" Rebekah shoved at her, not very hard. With a grin, Caroline slid out of the car.

"Fine, you dreadful bitch, thank you for nothing, and I'm keeping the outfit," Caroline called over her shoulder, making her way up the front walk.

"Good!" Bekah rolled down her window to yell back. "Finally your wardrobe has something with class in it!"

A hand to her chest, Caroline paused and gasped dramatically. "Don't be mad because money can't buy taste, Bekah."

"Ha!" was the only thing Rebekah managed to get out before the driver pulled away from the curb and sped down the street. Oof, that one wouldn't last long. She shook her head before unlocking the door and heading in.

True to Rebekah's word, two burly men and one extremely buff woman met her at the two-floor walk-up early the next morning, a nondescript box truck parked in the loading zone. After making sure they had thoroughly read the moving guide she'd had Rebekah forward to them, Caroline opened the front door with some anxiety. It didn't look like Tyler had even been home since she'd left, and while her knee-jerk reaction had been irritation, she reminded herself that that was no longer her business and to let it go.

Quickly directing her helpers towards the furniture that was hers, she started packing her knick-knacks. One of the men—he introduced himself cheerfully as Nate—grabbed a box and headed into the bathroom to get a head start on her personal things.

The morning passed quickly, and by noon they had emptied the apartment of everything that was hers. Caroline left her key on the kitchen counter and closed the door without a look back.

Making her way to her new apartment from the old oriented her better, and it was not lost on her how far into Mikaelson territory Rebekah had picked her housing options from. Her moving team certainly felt no compunction about pulling into a fire lane in front of her building to unload the truck faster. Certainly, it sat there for several hours and Caroline caught at least two parking officers checking out the license plate and then quickly driving off.

Organizing her new space took longer than packing up her old one. Mindy of the heavy lifting pair had a great eye for layouts and finally came up with the configuration that Caroline felt fit the living room best. There were certain things she was missing, like a dining room set and nearly everything for a bedroom. The kitchen set at her old place had been Tyler's mother's, and the bedroom set, while Caroline's, wasn't something she wanted anymore.

She'd done some online shopping last night from Enzo's patio sectional while he grilled and Kol leaned on her and gave his unsolicited opinions on her furniture tastes. Eventually, his insinuations on her very sturdy bed frame led to her hollering her extremely insincere condolences on his former boyfriend to Enzo, while she pinned Kol to the couch and whacked him with throw pillows.

"Eh, he went the way he would have wanted," Enzo said unconcernedly over Kol's muffled cackling while turning the kebabs with tongs, "Smothered by someone gorgeous under the stars, screaming."

Kol managed to grab the pillow and wrestled Caroline for it. "I said I wanted to die post-orgasm in a scandal, you tit."

"Did I imagine earlier in your tosser of a brother's Maserati? This is post-orgasm." Enzo gestured pointedly with the tongs, while Caroline clapped her hands over her ears, squealing.

"Yeah, well, he wasn't using it," she heard anyway. There seemed to be some meaningful eyebrow-waggling that accompanied this statement. Despite her curiosity, asking Kol what Klaus—Enzo called Elijah "The Asshole Robot"—had been doing would either put him in an awkward position or lead to him smugging smugly at her interest. If he could finagle it, probably both.

Dinner had been ready quickly after Kol's narrow escape, and Caroline had finished her furniture shopping over the last of the potato salad.

Standing in the middle of the bare spot where a small dining set would sit in about a week, Caroline surveyed her new little kingdom of one. The living room was set up with her comfy couch and coffee table, already made up for her to sleep on tonight. Tony, the quietest of the trio, had mounted and hooked up her tv and appliances while the other two unpacked boxes and set things up to Caroline's exacting expectations. Together, they'd probably reorganized the built-ins that hid the hallway to the bathroom and bedroom several times.

Mindy poked her head around the entry wall. "You need anything else, ma'am?"

With a smile, Caroline shook her head. They'd stubbornly refused to call her anything but 'ma'am' or 'Miss Caroline.' "No, the last box is kitchen things. It'll give me something to do while I wait for DoorDash."

An odd look crossed Mindy's face. "You already ordered?"

"No," Caroline said. "Not yet." What did her dinner plans matter now? The three had already refused to join her for pizza.

"Oh, okay." Her face cleared as her phone pinged. Glancing down at it for a moment, she then shoved it in her pants pocket. Looking a little alarmed, Mindy waved. "You have a great night, Miss Caroline!" She disappeared around the corner and the front door quickly shut.

Shaking her head as she dug her own phone out of her back pocket, Caroline muttered a soft, "Weirdo." Hopefully there were some good options on DoorDash around here. She had literally nothing in her fridge, and grocery shopping sounded exhausting after the whole day.

A soft knock on the front door made her look up from debating between a local Italian place and the chain burger place that would probably be faster. "Did I forget a box?" she called, mentally scrolling through a list of her belongings while walking to the front door and then peeking out the peephole. The sight of the man standing out in the hallway made her blink, her mind speed running the five stages of grief while her hand hovered above the doorknob.

"I have brought dinner," Klaus' voice came through the door after the moment stretched on, his tone tempting. "Italian, and wine."

Caroline pressed her lips together and silently pleaded with the heavens. One day, he couldn't give her one more day to find her equilibrium?

His voice dropped into a deeper register that made her bare toes curl on the wood floors. "There are breadsticks."

Acceptance settled into her empty stomach and burst into butterflies that she firmly tried to squash.

"Fine!" She jerked the door open, eyebrows raised. "Fine, but only because I'm starving. And don't even think of so much as breathing on my couch; I just got it all set up." If she had to lay down on her temporary bed tonight, and it smelled like Klaus' cologne—that damn cologne—she was going to do something indecent that she had thus far managed to restrain from because giving in to the temptation of fantasy had been a step too far.

Klaus stood there, annoyingly casual in his lightweight henley, necklaces peaking above the collar, a large paper bag held by the handles in one hand, and a bottle of wine dangling by the neck from two fingers in the other hand. His face reflected some internal delight, or maybe he actually was that pleased to see her. Ugh.

"Good evening, Caroline. Your couch is safe from me," he said, faux seriously.

"Good." Sticking out her hand for the bag, she gestured with her fingertips. Klaus pulled it closer to his chest and raised his eyebrows in expectation. His message was clear: dinner came with him.

"Ugh." She rolled her eyes and spun around, leaving the door open. "Come in then." The entry hallway emptied into the kitchen and dining area, and Caroline stood in the bare space for a moment in an odd little panic while his footsteps followed her, the door closing softly.

Right, no table, no chairs. No couch.

"So. I have the floor… or the floor." Turning around, she caught sight of him examining the main room. His gaze settled on the pull-out sofa already made up as a bed and the bright, almost floral abstract painting that it rested under, and his face did something subtle that nevertheless made heat creep up her cheeks. Lifting her chin, she ignored the slight lift at the corner of his lips when he met her eyes.

"The floor sounds lovely," he reassured her, setting the bag on the small bar counter space that separated the kitchen from the rest of the room. She supposed they could have eaten standing at the bar, but Caroline was tired, and being that close to him tonight would give her hives.

While he set about unpacking the food from the bag, Caroline opened the cabinet in the built-ins she'd stored the blankets in and pulled out the one she used for picnics. This was picnic adjacent.

"I ordered from this little place two blocks away, been in the neighborhood for years," Klaus said conversationally. "There's something of everything since I didn't know what you'd feel like tonight."

"I mean, you could have called and asked." Unfolding the blanket, she snapped it out and let it float down to the floor. "But then you wouldn't have been able to ambush me."

Pausing in lifting the lids off the containers, he turned and shot her a surprisingly boyish grin. Lifting his shoulder in a little 'what can you do?' shrug, he went back to the takeout.

"Oh my god" Caroline huffed. "Where are my wine glasses? That bottle better be impressive if I'm going to have to tolerate you." Going around him into the kitchen, she opened the cabinet she'd told Nate to put glasses in and found her instructions followed very carefully. The wine glasses without stems were in the front and she pulled down two.

"Anything less than impressive for you, sweetheart, would pain me."

"You're a pain," Caroline muttered childishly, searching in the box on the counter for the corkscrew.

Klaus' face was amused as she turned back around to the island and started prying the cork out of the bottle. "Yes, but I did bring breadsticks." She sent him a squinty-eyed look that bounced right off him as he looked around the room before spotting the coffee table pushed against the wall. The wide path he took around her couch was not lost on her, and she felt maybe the teensiest bit of pleasure at the fact that while she was clearly being completely and totally rational about the couch, he was still abiding by her rules.

It certainly didn't hurt that watching him pick up her coffee table and carry it to the middle of the blanket was much more enjoyable than watching any of the movers had been. The pop of the cork leaving the bottle startled her back to her task, and she quickly gathered the glasses and brought them and the bottle to the table. Going back for plates and silverware kept her busy while Klaus moved the containers down to the table, and then there wasn't anything left for her to do but join him on the floor.

Sitting cross-legged, she rubbed her hands against her leggings. Plastic serving spoons stuck out of every dish, each steaming gently. The smell really was incredible. Klaus watched her intently, which she ignored in favor of piling scoops of baked ziti, classic lasagna, mushroom carbonara, sausage tortellini, and a few other things she didn't know the names of on her plate. She topped it off with three breadsticks and promptly dug in.

Klaus seemed satisfied as he filled his own plate and did the same, although he left the breadsticks for her. Ripping off the end of one, she dunked it in the small bowl of alfredo dipping sauce and took a bite, humming unconsciously.

"So, which of them ratted out my location?" Caroline asked, casually. "My money's currently on Bekah, but you might have had something to bribe Kol with." While Kol could be the biggest blabbermouth with his inner circle, the more you wanted the information he had, the higher the price was. The trick to getting it was pretending you didn't care about the information, but she doubted Kol would have believed a moment of Klaus' feigned disinterest in her in that scenario. Caroline wondered what he had paid for the information on the night of her break up. Kol's price would have been extortion.

Rebekah on the other hand would have gleefully sold her to Satan for one corn chip. Or possibly new shoes. She was overly invested in Klaus not dying a bitter old man.

"Kol is currently personally supervising the detailing of my car, I doubt he'd inform me if the mansion happened to be on fire." Klaus glanced up from his food and Caroline tried to look politely interested and uninformed of Kol's vehicular activities. The corner of his mouth twitched, and he looked back down to fork a tortellini.

"Rebekah," Caroline said, in the way one would say 'Traitor,' and bit the end off a breadstick.

"Yes, well, there are not many things my sister values higher than her own ambitions. She's overseeing a few ventures in my stead tonight, a trial run for the future." He was questioning the wisdom of this, judging by his tone.

Her surprise wasn't feigned in the least, although slightly exaggerated. "What? Klaus—Control Freak Extraordinaire—letting someone else take the reins for a night?" Gesturing at the door with her fork, she let her tone go mockingly serious. "Are you sure you don't need to go supervise her right this minute?"

Pausing to pour both of them a glass of red wine, he shot her a look that clearly said he was onto her. "It takes one to know one, love," he said mildly. Her soft scoff only made his smile wider. "No? Just a moment, I believe I have—" Leaning back, he dug in his pocket for his phone. Caroline waited with ill patience while he found what he was looking for.

"'Number 1.'" he read off of his phone. "'All surfaces should be wiped down with provided Lysol wipes.'"

Caroline jerked, sitting upright in horror. "Is that my moving guide?" She was going to murder Bekah with her own two hands.

Klaus flicked her a mirthful glance before looking back at his phone. "'If you run out of wipes, sponges and cleaner are in the red bucket, which should be placed under the kitchen sink immediately.'"

"Give me that! Who sent it to you?" she demanded, reaching over the table and making a swipe for his phone. Leaning slightly out of reach, Klaus held his phone up and continued to read dramatically.

"'Number 2. Pay careful attention to color coding on boxes. All boxes will be taped accordingly: blue for kitchen—'"

"Delete that!" Caroline aimed an indignant kick under the table at his knee, and he jerked, jostling the table a little and nearly dropping his phone. A wide grin dimpled his delighted face, and a fluttery little spark filled her chest. Unbidden, a laugh escaped her, and something warm and heated crept into Klaus' eyes.

Glancing away, she picked up her wine glass and took a sip to cover for the riot of butterflies that seemed to have taken over her stomach. "You're the worst, I cannot believe I'm friends with you," she huffed, unthinking.

The silence after that statement seemed to stretch on for long moments.

"Is that what we are, Caroline?" Klaus asked, finally, leaning forward intently.

She avoided looking at him and slowly twirled pasta around her fork. "We're not not friends," Caroline hedged slowly.

"We're not," he agreed.

"We could maybe… try to be? Friends, that is."

Tapping the pad of his finger against the side of the wine glass, Klaus considered her thoughtfully. "Is that all?"

God, she needed to get a grip on the way this man effected her. It was too soon, she scolded herself. Too bad that this feeling had existed all along, and the desire to say no, that wasn't all she wanted, made her palms prickle.

"I just got out of this thing with Tyler, I'm not ready to…" Deflecting probably wasn't her best move, judging by the slow, satisfied smile lurking in his dimples.

"Friends, then, for now," Klaus said, contented. "And I reserve the right to change your mind."

Exasperation shot through her. "I'll change my mind right now if you keep annoying me. Eat your pasta!" Shoving a forkful of linguine in her mouth, she watched him testily.

Obediently—and wasn't that a phrase she'd never associated with Klaus before—he tucked back into his plate, still looking like he'd triumphed in some long-pitched battle.

Caroline pressed the ball of her foot against his knee and shoved. "Stop," shove, "Looking," shove, "So pleased," shove, "Or I'll throw you out." Shove.

He rode out her jostling. "You're always kicking me, what a violent thing you are. If you throw me out," he lowered his voice like he was telling a secret, and she hated that she leaned in, "I'm taking the tiramisu with me."

Squinted, suspicious. "There's tiramisu?"

Klaus gestured with his fork at the bag still sitting on the counter. "Made just this morning."

He had her dead to rights, ugh. "Fine, but we're talking about something else." At Klaus' nod, she pulled another breadstick out of the bag. "Cubbies are looking good this year."

"If you're looking to be disappointed," Klaus said disparagingly, scooping more tortellini on his plate.

"Now wait just a second—"

Dinner passed quickly if not peacefully, and Caroline managed to save room for a slice of tiramisu. Klaus helped her clean up and refused any leftovers, packing them away in her empty fridge. Something of her tiredness must have shown on her face since Klaus made his excuses fairly quickly.

"The evening was a delight, sweetheart," Klaus said warmly as she walked him to the door. "Thank you for indulging me."

"You're maybe not the worst company ever," Caroline conceded as she opened the door.

His lips curled in amusement as he stepped into the doorway, then paused to turn back to her. "Now, I'm just down the hall if you need anything."

The portion of Caroline's brain that had been basking in the good feelings from the nice end of a tiring day screeched to a halt. "Down the hall?"

"Well, down the hall and up a few floors, but the gist is there. Floor 23." He was annoyingly pleased with her dawning horror. Things were falling into place like dominoes in her mind.

"Oh my god, you own the building," Caroline hissed. "That's why Bekah took me here, you own it." Move in specials, her ass.

He didn't deny it. "The security is excellent, and I'm greatly hoping to see you at the pool."

"Out, get out," she shoved at his shoulder and he let her push him out into the hallway.

"Remember, if you need anything…" He looked far too pleased with himself.

"I'm not borrowing sugar from my local serial killer, Klaus." Caroline slammed the door in his face and locked it.

And if that night on the couch, she'd pressed the picnic blanket to her nose searching once again for Klaus' spicy cologne, well, she didn't owe anyone any explanations anymore.

Now, looking at Tyler too satisfied face over the bar, the memory of Klaus' laughter as he left her apartment buoyed her. That had been the start of freedom, the start of everything.

"I'm not testifying against my husband, and you can't make me." Even if she hadn't extensively researched her rights, Elijah had practically kidnapped her for a "So You're Marrying a Mikaelson" crash course in legal know-how. He may have walked out of that one with a limp for assuming she hadn't already done her homework. Her old grudge had a well-cared-for grave that she occasionally came back to dance upon when he annoyed her.

Flipping open his folder, he set a picture on the counter. Reluctantly, Caroline leaned forward to look at it. A cell phone photo of her bracelet in the original blue box shone up at her. "Okay, so? This isn't even an official photo. You took this on my dresser." She pointed at the wood grain behind it.

"I still have the original file." Tyler moved the wedding photo closer to her with one finger and tapped the hand resting on Klaus' shoulder. Infinity links sparkled on her wrist.

"He gave them back," Caroline scoffed. Rarely was Klaus anything Caroline would call 'nervous'—he was the most self-assured person she knew—but he was certainly somewhere near the ballpark of it when he offered her the bracelet the night before the ceremony.

Tyler shrugged. "You say." Another picture was pushed at her, a shot of Klaus' drawing of her next to the pony. She'd seen a lot more of his fixation with drawing her since then.

Tapping the words, he smirked at her. "Whatever you told him, he obviously appreciated."

Caroline glared flatly at him. "You're an ass."

"Probably," Tyler shrugged. "But we had three operations fail due to what we assumed was leaked intel in the next month. We never caught the leak."

A laugh burst out of her, a short, brittle thing. "And you think it was me, that I sold you out."

"I…" he drew out the word, "I think it sure looks like it. I brought some of my work home, who knows what you saw." Scooting the rest of the photos into the pile one by one showed her some other things: an open file, a shot of an empty warehouse, and a body slumped on the ground.

She clenched her teeth. "So, in other words, you don't care that you know this is bullshit."

He smiled patronizingly. "Of course I care, I'm a federal officer. And it's my job to give you a chance to come clean. You could cut a deal with us, avoid prison time? Just give us enough information to end the stranglehold Klaus has on this city. Or…" There was a dramatic pause, and Caroline wondered inanely if he was still mainlining Law and Order episodes to relax.

"Or what?" she asked impatiently. "You'll bring these bullshit charges before a judge, and Elijah will get your whole case thrown out?" The chain of evidence was completely broken, he'd never get a conviction. What would anyone learn from this, that she was loyal to her husband?

"Or…" God, was he going to do that every time? "I start taking a very hard look at Bill."

That threw her a little. "Bill? He's dead." Very, very dead.

"And all of Chicago thinks your husband killed him."

Caroline made a derisive sound. "Well, they're wrong."

Tyler leaned forward. "I think that may be the first true thing you've said to me all evening." The dirty look she shot him didn't seem to phase him, and he rested his elbows on the edge of the bar. "Six years ago, Bill disappeared, and then Klaus shows up with Bill's fancy heirloom ring around his neck like some trophy, and the only thing you would say was that it was fine, and he got what he deserved. Your mom was sick, I thought maybe you just didn't want to get involved."

"Yeah, so?" Grief clenched a fist in her chest at the mention of her mom, still, always.

"So I know how he got that ring, how the Mikaelsons went into seclusion in that little safe house they used to have in Kenwood. That they stayed two nights as if they were planning something. Maybe they were waiting. Elijah left for an hour the second morning and returned looking annoyed. But that second night? Klaus left for ten minutes and came back. They went back to the mansion the next morning, and no one said shit about finding Bill because Klaus had that ring." The front page pictures of the funeral of Henrik Mikaelson had been splashed with photos of Klaus wearing Bill's ring on a chain outside his suit.

The plans Caroline had been concocting to deal with this mess shattered and left her with one option. At least the list for that one was well arranged with time. Curling her fingers under the lip of the bar, she pressed a button wired to the underside, flipping on the signal jammer.

"As the only junior agent assigned to that stakeout, I saw him meet that courier. I know he didn't kill Bill, didn't have the time. But over the years, I've wondered. How many people knew about that little bolthole, could look through their mother's files for information so that they could arrange a drop like that? Who could guess that Klaus would take his family to that spot, to that one spot in Kenwood." Tyler leaned in, looking feverish, eyes bright with a brittle sort of triumph. "It's a short list, and you have Enzo in your back pocket. Whatever you bought from Klaus with that ring, is it worth going to jail for murder for? Was it worth the disappointment your mom would feel if she knew what you'd done? Plead guilty to the lesser charge, Caroline. Make an unselfish decision, for once." He looked so self-righteous, so sure of her decision.

How delightful to disappoint him.

Caroline's gaze flicked up as a shadow fell across the bar.

"Tyler, Tyler, Tyler," Klaus said as Tyler spun around to face him. "How very unfortunate for you, that once again, you ignore my generosity. You should have taken my gift for what it was, a very gracious warning. But instead of finding something else to do with your life, you walked into my bar, and threatened my wife."

Standing there with his hands in his pockets, Klaus shouldn't have seemed like such a menacing figure, but Caroline had seen him stab a man in the heart as casually as breathing from this position before.

"You were at the mansion," Tyler protested, a hand clenching against the bar while he shifted to put the photos behind him.

Klaus' eyes traced Caroline, a brief little assessment. She nodded, and a satisfied little smile lingered at the corners of his mouth.

"Was I?" Looking back at Tyler, Klaus' smile turned bladed. "How convenient for me. I suppose Rebekah's alibis have improved somewhat."

"You can't make me disappear like one of your criminal thugs." Tyler didn't quite sound panicked, but something in his head must have realized that he was in danger. "I'm a federal agent, they'll look for me."

"So they will," Klaus agreed. "What a disappointment to your memory that there will be nothing for them to find. Unfounded suspicions do not win court cases, as your prosecutors keep finding." Caroline nearly laughed, remembering the disgust on Elijah's face when he came home from the FBI's last attempt to drag Klaus' books into question. Being an absolutely cold bastard hadn't hurt him any in the courtroom, and despite his personality flaws, he was an excellent lawyer.

"I've left duplicates—" Tyler started.

"Yes, at your desk in the Bureau. Don't worry, my associate was quite thorough." Klaus cocked his head patronizingly. "If there are others, they will be found. Doubtful this little ploy of yours had any weight to it with your superiors, otherwise you would be here with a team during business hours, not here in your personal car past two in the morning."

"You can't…You won't…" The stutter in Tyler's voice was very unfortunate. Reaching a hand behind her, Caroline wrapped it around the neck of a whiskey bottle. Tyler did stupid things when he backed himself into a corner, and knowing her husband's temper, things were about to get violent. And Tyler himself had a hell of a temper.

Pulling his hands from his pockets, Klaus very obviously palmed a knife. "You'll find, Tyler, that there isn't a sin I'm unwilling to commit to keep Caroline safe. The potential usefulness you've held is now outweighed by the idiocy of your decisions. I'm afraid you're not going to be making it to that transfer next month after all, as you'll be dead."

"No, no fuck you!" Tyler pulled his hands from the bar and clenched them. "I'm not going down like that." His right hand dove into his jacket.

Behind him, Caroline swung the bottle and it connected with the side of his head with a crack. The glass shattered and alcohol splashed the floors, the side of the bar, and Klaus' shoes. Tyler folded like a house of cards, sprawled out on the floor.

"Ugh, I just mopped that section," Caroline grumped, dropping the broken bottle neck into the trash.

"Sweetheart, must you always aim for my shoes?" Klaus flicked an amused look at her through golden tipped lashes. The tension hadn't quite left his body, and he was fingering the handle of his knife contemplatively, as if giving Tyler's unconscious body a few stabs would be an exercise in stress relief.

Caroline laughed, pressing the back of her hand—fingers damp with booze—to her mouth. "God, that feels so long ago." And yet at the same time she could almost feel Enzo's arm in hers, practically frog-marching her to her doom.

"I don't see why I had to come," Caroline had said, voice strained while the cold air made mist of her breath. The parking lot next to the bar where the Uber had dropped them was practically full. A neon sign over the door proclaimed 'Talbot's'. Despite being a brick building with no windows to speak of, it wasn't exactly featureless, with old-fashioned details on the brick facade. A few hipsters stood outside around a kerosene warmer, blowing smoke rings into the air and laughing.

"Because unfortunately, I think I like this one—fuck if I know why—and ripping the band-aid off is really the best way of handling this." Enzo stopped next to the front door and watched while Caroline fidgeted with her scarf.

"You're going to be inconveniently out of a best friend if he murders me," Caroline said dryly.

"I've heard a certain member of the Mikaelson family has declared you off limits, I'm sure you'll be fine." Enzo grinned as he blew into his hands to warm them.

A groan escaped her as she imagined what Tyler would say about that. Their fights were starting to become a little too frequent, and his most beloathed nemesis showing her more favor after the Tiffany bracelet incident was sure to start another. His last ultimatum to stay away from Klaus rang in her head, and the spiteful urge of malicious compliance rose in her. It was the thing that had gotten her into the car in the first place.

"And besides," Enzo continued, a lot quieter, "You took care of that matter. He can't say you didn't."

Caroline blew out a sigh. She would need several drinks before she was willing to go there. Still, the urge won. This wasn't hanging out with Klaus, this was just his deeply unhinged little brother.

"Fine," she drew out the word, "Let's go get you laid, or whatever. Don't tell me."

"You're a goddess among mortals." The cheeky little smile he flashed her earned him a punch in the arm, and he was still rubbing it when they walked through the door.

It was like being hit with a wall of sound and heat. Jaunty pub music played in the background of a full house of chatter, the clinking of glasses and the roar of laughter occasional counterpoints to the din. The heat had her peeling out of her jacket in moments while they looked through the odd little warren of booths and bar space.

Enzo finally found Kol Mikaelson sprawled in a booth in the back by the kitchen door, one foot on the bench beside him, a tumbler with something very green in it in front of him. Caroline let out a small sigh because honestly, was it reasonable for the whole family to just Look Like That?

"Darling!" He shouted upon seeing Enzo. "Join me!" Spreading his legs, he beckoned Enzo lewdly with both hands.

"You fucking git." Despite his words and the fact that he chucked his beanie at Kol, Enzo was still grinning as he hung up his jacket on the hooks on the outside of the booth. Shoving Kol's leg down, Enzo slid into the booth and gave the man a kiss that Caroline quickly glanced away from.

Taking her time, Caroline hung up her own jacket and scarf and slid into the opposite side of the booth from the pair. Kol glanced at her, did a double take, and then looked her over carefully.

"Well now, what do we have here?" Kol smiled widely, a little hungrily.

Enzo gestured from one to the other. "Caroline, this is Kol. Kol, this is Gorgeous."

Caroline did a little wave with her fingers. "Hey, nice to meet you, despite you being related to Elijah."

He blinked. "Elijah? The world's most boring automaton?"

"Yep." She did not elaborate.

"Gorgeous has a well-founded grudge," Enzo said aside in a loud whisper.

"Well, Caroline Forbes, aren't you just a treat?" She stiffened at the stress on her last name. "Your reputation precedes you."

"Well, as Enzo's bestie since high school, I sure hope so." Maybe he would take the redirection from her reputation for the giant hint it was. "Although, I equally hope he hasn't told you every story in the arsenal."

"Just the really, really good ones," Enzo reassured her unhelpfully, taking a sip of Kol's obnoxiously green drink. He promptly coughed and wheezed, setting the cup down while Kol cackled. "What the hell is that? Jet fuel?"

"Bathtub absinthe," Kol chortled. "Smooth, isn't it?" he rubbed Enzo's back as Enzo leaned back, trying to breathe.

"My fucking lungs." Enzo pushed the cup toward the end of the table. Caroline caught a whiff of it as it passed and it nearly made her breath hitch.

A harried-looking waitress materialized at the end of their table, grabbing the glass. "Evening, Kol, Kol's friends, can I get you anything drinkable?"

"That's technically drinkable, April," Kol protested.

She gave him the squinty-eyed look of a food service professional who has seen some shit. "It's licorice-flavored horse piss, it's not going on the menu."

"But I lost a layer off my tongue for that!" Kol stuck his faintly green tongue out and pointed at it.

April's eye was caught by someone trying to flag her down. "Sounds like it's your boyfriend's problem what you do with your tongue, not mine," she scoffed. "I'll be back in a minute, figure out your order." Disappearing into the crowd, she took the terrible drink with her.

Enzo watched her go. "I like her," he said after a moment.

Kol flung an arm over his shoulder. "Darling, she won't join us. That is a whole-ass lesbian." An idea seemed to occur to him, and he turned to look at Caroline.

"So, Caroline—" he started, and she braced herself for what was probably going to be the third-worst request for a threesome in her life.

"No!" Enzo yelped. "No, veto, nope. Off limits, e vietato l'accesso, negato…" he kept muttering in Italian, a hand pressed to his forehead, probably trying to erase the mental images.

"No one ever lets me have any fun," complained Kol.

Caroline thought that was a bit rich considering what his YouTube channel got up to on the regular. Kol had started out with a low-key restaurant review channel called "Cook Out With Your Cock Out," with the occasional cooking video and a modest following, which had grown into a semi-regular cooking show with a new review every week and millions of views each week. He toured every hole-in-the-wall eatery that sounded good from his suggestions slush pile. His show had been a boon to some businesses. For others, it had been a death toll. Still, he seemed to close out a lot of bars on the regular.

[Kol Mikaelson's Youtube page, titled "Cook Out With Your Cock Out." The O in Cock is replaced with an emoji chicken. Three videos are shown. The first is titled "Wine and Dine with Caroline." It seems to be the sixth in the series, at Martin's Restaurant. The second video is titled "Everything You're Doing Wrong With Pizza, Chicago featuring Enzo." The third video is titled "It's not Arson It's Just Hibachi! I Did Not Burn Down The Kitchen." The runtimes for all three videos are all about fifteen minutes.]

"Oh my god, please let her come back soon. I need a shot to burn that image out of my brain." Caroline sighed.

A sly smile pulled up the corner of Kol's mouth. "Just one?"

Tilting her head in contemplation, Caroline found the images still fresh. Blegh. "Okay, maybe several."

"Want to make it interesting?" Kol's smile turned charming, but she'd gotten a look like that from Klaus before, and if she'd managed not to fold to him, she certainly wasn't going to fall for the junior edition.

April rematerialized at the end of the table as Caroline gave him a flat look. "I am not playing a drinking game for sexual favors." If he was trying to get her to leave, he was doing a good job of it.

"Ha, she's got you pegged," April crowed.

Kol slumped on the table with a whined, "God, if only." As if he was in pain, Enzo made the most distressed groan.

With a huff, Caroline made to get up, and Kol flung out his arms. "Wait wait wait wait." When she paused, he licked his lips, looking like he was thinking rapidly. "Match me for shots, and I swear on—" He paused as if trying to think of something that actually mattered to him.

"Your car," Enzo suggested dryly, head propped on his hand, elbow on the table as he watched Kol struggle.

Kol made a face. "Ugh, fine, my car—that I will never mention a threesome again." Out of the corner of her eye, Caroline saw April give Kol a surprised look. Apparently, this was a theme.

She tapped her nails on the tabletop, giving him a contemplative look. This was Enzo's new beau, and he apparently saw something in him, in addition to him being a horny little weirdo. And maybe, just a little tiny bit of her was curious about him as Klaus' younger brother.

"I have conditions." At his nod, Caroline continued. "One, shots taken one at a time. Two, a ten shot maximum, not to be exceeded. I am not out here trying to die of alcohol poisoning on a Tuesday night. Three, you're paying, YouTube Sensation Kol Mikaelson. Wait wait! Four, no question questions while we're drunk."

Kol looked too delighted; she probably hadn't given him enough conditions. "Agreed." Turning to April, who was waiting with the impatient jiggle of someone with an elsewhere to be, he adopted a thinking pose. "For starters, one round for each of us Cowboy Cocksucker, Purple Motherfucker, and Alligator Sperm Shot shots." He had the air of someone obnoxiously pleased with himself.

April rolled her eyes and disappeared into the crowd.

"You know, it occurs to me that this is an amazing opportunity," Kol said. "I need to do more shorts, as my manager keeps complaining at me. Care if I film?" He pulled a bendy-legged tripod out of his pocket, and Caroline wondered if he'd planned this. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him no, but then Tyler's face during their last argument popped into her head.

"Just stay away from Klaus!" He'd shouted, before slamming the bathroom door.

Well, she could definitely say she stayed away from Klaus. If he tried to tell her to stay away from her best friend's boyfriend, she'd have to tell him where to shove it. How exhausting.

"Yeah," she self-consciously brushed her hair back. "That's fine."

Kol grinned. "Excellent," he purred, fingers moving back and forth on the phone. "Let me set up…" The tripod he bent around the small sconce mounted in their booth above a stack of menus and shedding a muted light onto the occupants. In a moment he had everything attached and, presumably, filming.

"What's up, gastro-knobs!" Kol finger-gunned into the camera. "I'm here with Enzo again, joined by his bestie Caroline—" Caroline waved at the camera after Enzo, "—And tonight we are doing shots shots shots! We've got a round coming, and Caroline has graciously agreed to have a little drinking competition with me." He waved his hand at Caroline like a magician announcing his assistant, and Caroline was amused by this suddenly charming persona he'd donned for the camera.

"You're on," she said gamely.

"Yes!" He said, just as April sidled up to the table with a tray. "April! Woman of the hour, here with our libations. What do you have for us this round?"

She shot him a look that clearly communicated she was onto him and his bullshit as she set the small glasses down in groups. "Some of the most absurdly named drinks I've ever heard of, Kol. Now, unless there's anything else? No? Okay bye." There was practically a smoke trail after her as she left.

"Don't think she likes you much," Enzo said cheerfully.

Kol flapped his hand dismissively. "It was one teeny tiny fire behind the bar, I don't know what she's so upset about!" Caroline snorted, grinning despite herself. Kol looked like he had won a prize.

"So! We have," he said, pointing to each grouping of drinks as he named them for the camera. "These dark purple ones are the Purple Motherfucker, the green are the Alligator Sperm Shot, and the coffee-looking ones with the cream on top are the Cowboy Cocksucker. Caroline, as the guest of honor, you choose." He grinned at her, and Caroline felt a lot of sympathy for April.

Smiling a challenge at him, she picked up a glass and held it up. "Cowboy Cocksucker," she announced.

Enzo grabbed the same. "Come on, Kol, get it up." He nudged his boyfriend with an elbow, who in turn shot him a lascivious look as he picked up his drink.

"No problems there, darling."

"Seriously, I do not need the details of my best friend's sex life, there are some things I do not contemplate!" Caroline downed the shot in desperation. It was surprisingly butterscotchy.

"Not bad," she said, setting the glass aside. "I was expecting, like, straight vodka shots, but that had a nice little kick to it."

"Straight vodka—" Kol looked disgruntled as he swallowed his. "Do I look like a university student?"

Enzo reached across and built a little pyramid from their empty glasses. "They're called 'non-traditional students.' Easier to go back when you've got a career. You won't catch me back in those seats, but Gorgeous wants that second diploma."

"I'm great where I am—event management—" Caroline told Kol, picking out a glass of Alligator Sperm Shot for each of them. "But I could have even more scope with a BM."

Kol's mouth quirked. "Yes, Nik was so annoyed with Bekah for not using your hotel for the ball. I could hear the shouting across the house."

The alcohol was clearly working since her cheeks were feeling a little warm. "Well, then I wouldn't have been able to attend, since I would have been working it." A Mikaelson ball? Her director would have lobbed that at her like a live grenade. None of the other planners would have been up to it, even if they hadn't known what he was.

"I'm sure Nik would have found some way to steal you for part of the evening. You certainly would have stayed longer than you did." He grinned at her, delighted to be talking around the elephant in the room.

Caroline scowled. "Klaus doesn't get everything he wants. Besides, I'm spoken for."

Kol laughed. "I guess we'll see then. Alright, the second shot of the evening! Alligator Sperm Shot, thank you for such delightful choices, Caroline."

They downed the shots as one and added the little cups to Enzo's structure.

"Alright, gastro-knobs and alcohol enthusiasts, put some questions in the comments, and we'll do a little Q and A with our next round."

Kol peeled his phone out of the holder and stopped filming. With a warning look at Kol, Enzo excused himself to run to the restroom. While Kol apparently went through the process of a quick and dirty edit, Caroline squinted at him.

"I thought I said 'No questions.'"

He made a noise of amusement while he looked at the screen. "These won't be those types of questions. No one will care that you're Bill Forbes' daughter."

Caroline couldn't decide if that meant that he didn't care. "Why'd you ask me to stay? I thought you were trying to get me to leave, earlier."

Kol looked up, mischievous. "What happened to no questions?"

Resting her chin on her hands, she blinked widely. "Are you drunk already? You can say you don't want to answer it."

"How about in exchange for one from me?" he bargained. Caroline weighed how bad his innuendo might get in the space of one question, and decided to risk it. She wanted to know.

"Fine."

Kol looked back down at his phone but still seemed to keep an eye on her. "You played the Enzo card when I mentioned your reputation. Not the 'Your brother is so obsessed with me, he's filled sketchbooks with doodles of my face' card. You can imagine which one I care about more."

Ugh, it was definitely not just the alcohol making her face red this time. "Well, you know, same."

"My turn." Setting the phone down with the little uploading bar crawling across the screen, he leaned on his arms, face cold. "He is dead, isn't he?"

The question went through Caroline like a knife, and she could almost feel the blood spray on her face again. She should have expected he would bring this up. It was why she'd banned questions in the first place.

"Extremely," she said evenly, absently wiping at her cheek.

Kol seemed to weigh her answer, and then smiled, viciously. "Good. Nik said so, but apparently… you would know." It wasn't a question, and Caroline didn't answer it, but Kol seemed to divine the answer anyway.

It was into this silence that Enzo came back. He looked back and forth between them, stopping on Caroline. "Do I need to kick his ass?" he asked seriously.

Kol tried to look bewildered. "God, I hope not, I'm actually starting to like her."

"Gorgeous?"

"Ugh, weirdly, I think he's growing on me. It's probably the alcohol." She shot Enzo a grateful look. "Sit down, you're making him nervous."

"The twat should be nervous, putting that look on your face." He slid into the booth, ignoring Kol's protestations of innocence.

"—And she started it!" Kol finished, looking sulky.

Caroline laughed, and the moment was broken. "Yeah, I guess I did. Now!" Grabbing two of the last three shot glasses, she slid one in front of each of them. "This drink is very purple, and I'm curious what it tastes like."

Enzo gave her a look like he knew what she was doing, but he picked up his shot. Turning to Kol, he jabbed a finger at him. "She's covering for you, but don't do it again." He tossed back the shot, then screwed his face up. "That gave me cavities."

"Ooo!" Caroline cooed before slamming back her shot. It tasted like the most alcoholic melted red slushy she could imagine. Feeling pleasantly warm, she added her glass to the stack.

Kol had apparently drunk his, as he added his glass to the stack. His phone buzzed on the table, and he glanced down. Rubbed his hands together gleefully. "The questions are pouring in, excellent." He turned to Enzo and held out a hand. "Give me your mobile."

Suspicion radiated from Enzo. "What for?"

"Notes, I need to make notes! For questions. Completely above board, I will not rename your contacts in the slightest."

Very hesitantly, Enzo unlocked his phone, found the notes app, and handed it over. Kol started scrolling through his phone and coping questions down. Trying to peek, Enzo leaned over, and Kol tilted the phone away.

"No, it'll be more fun this way," he protested.

Caroline rolled her eyes. "If I have to sit through the internet asking my A/S/L, I am going to need french fries. Puh-leaze tell me you serve them."

"Of course we serve french fries, what do you take us for?" Kol sounded insulted.

"I dunno, one of those weird places with like, Torture Rye or Oyster Waffles or something," she said absently, trying to catch a server's eye.

"Oyster Waffles?" Kol exchanged a confused glance with Enzo. "What do you Americans eat?"

"I think the list of what they don't eat is shorter," Enzo muttered, as April slid back in front of the table.

"Did you need something?" she smiled at Caroline.

"Did you lose a bet, is that why you're the only one who comes within ten feet of this table?" Caroline asked, leaning on her arm.

"Rock Paper Scissors, actually. I lost." April heaved a dramatic sigh. Caroline nodded understandingly. Things were a little fuzzy at the edges, so she did it carefully.

"'Rock Paper Scissors,'" Kol quoted mockingly. "I am a delight! For that, you're on shift for the next family dinner."

April looked pained. "Oh god. I will read off your dumb drink names, just please do not put me in a room with you and your brothers and knives."

"Rebekah's going to be so insulted you didn't include her." He continued typing and looking back and forth from his phone.

April glanced uncomfortably at Caroline and Enzo. "Rebekah uses… other things," she muttered. The rumored gun collection Rebekah hoarded was famous in certain circles. Caroline kept her face politely confused.

"Caroline would like some french fries." Kol finally looked up, smiled a little meanly, and ignored her concerns. "We'd also like some more shots." He proceeded to rattle off a list just as creative as the last one, and April dipped the second he finished.

It took about fifteen minutes for her to come back with fries and a tray of drinks. Kol had his phone set back up by that time, and he waited until she'd set down the shots and left before he got a thumbs-up from everyone and started filming again.

"Back again, gastro-knobs, here with SO Enzo and his bestie Caroline. We've ordered more shots, and now I have some of the very rude and naughty questions you sent in to titillate us while we drink." He waggled his bushy eyebrows at the camera. "Enzo! Time for you to pick a drink for us; Caroline is very busy with her french fries, as you can see."

Caroline gestured at him with a fry dipped in ketchup. "Listen. My french fry habit is not a problem, it is a way of life."

"Oh, now you did it," Enzo muttered and started picking out a set of bright blue shots and setting them in front of each of them.

"The french fry is the perfect food," Caroline said, ignoring Enzo. "It is potato-y goodness, fried to perfection, salted, and accompanied by dipping sauces." She shoved the fry in her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. "I would marry french fries if I could."

"Oh no, there's competition." Kol looked mischievously down at his notes file. "Which brings me to our first question from 'originaljane': 'Wait, did she just sass Klaus? Your older, hotter brother?'" He whipped his head around to look at Enzo. "What are we drinking?"

"Blue Balls Shot." Enzo was clearly fighting a grin. "In honor of Klaus."

Kol cackled like a loon and Caroline nearly choked. "Cheers, I'll drink to that," he wheezed.

Everyone grabbed their drink and tossed it back. Kol slammed his glass down. "Now! First off, what do you mean 'hotter?' He's certainly older, but 'hotter?" Waving his hands at the camera, Kol obviously had a bone to pick. "It's the dimples isn't it, he's got those stupid dimples with that whole tortured artist thing. Caroline, confirm/deny: it's the dimples?"

He looked too fucking pleased with himself, the ass.

Caroline gestured with another fry. "Honestly, I can't see around his ego, I wouldn't know."

Kol choked on air and coughed, wheezing like someone had punctured a lung. He looked delighted though, like Christmas had come early and he unexpectedly wasn't getting coal in his stocking.

"Caroline, I think you're my new favorite person," he said, trying to catch his breath. He leaned on Enzo's shoulder. "Darling, I'm adopting your friend and keeping her now."

Shaking his head, Enzo looked at him fondly. "I'm not even mad. Caroline on the other hand might not want to be adopted by the Manson family."

Wrinkling her nose, Caroline squeezed more ketchup on the paper liner of her fry basket. "Please keep me out of your deranged family dynamic." She hadn't even met Rebekah yet and she was fairly sure she'd never want to sit across a table from her. "Ask a new question!"

"Uh." Kol looked down at his list, slouching comfortably on Enzo. "From 'Naruto_the_Fifth': 'Tell her the best wedding present she can buy is the $80 balsamic.' Who's getting married? Me?! Am I getting married? Darling, are we getting married?" Reaching up to his nose, Kol tapped Enzo on the tip of his.

"Oh my god, we'll revisit this conversation in a year." Enzo put his hand over Kol's face and pushed. Squawking, Kol nearly slid under the booth. With a heave, he righted himself, readjusting the rolled-up sleeves of his button-up.

"What's the eighty-dollar balsamic?" Caroline asked around a french fry before this could devolve into a shoving fest.

Kol lit up. "I'm delighted you asked." He ran down the highlights of one of his cooking episodes where he taste-tested various balsamic kinds of vinegar, up to and including the one-thousand dollar Giuseppe Giusti bottle of century-aged balsamic.

"One-thousand dollars?" Caroline yelped.

"Yep," Kol said, popping the 'p.' "Not worth it, in my opinion. The Modena balsamic is much more bang for your buck if you absolutely have to be hoity-toity about it."

Caroline looked at Enzo. "Your boyfriend is completely disconnected from reality. Not even if I won the lottery would I spend that."

Kol looked disgruntled. "Nik made me take it out of my fund like we couldn't afford it or something. Elijah nearly went into raptures over it, I think it should have counted as a household expense!"

Putting her index fingers together, Caroline separated them quickly in a show of how far apart Kol was from rational spending decisions. Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she fished it out. Tyler, telling her he wouldn't be home tonight.

[8:36 pm]

Tyler: Won't be home tonight

Caroline: It's fine, I'm out with Enzo and his new boyfriend

Tyler: Wait. Is that who I think it is?

Caroline: You know, I think I like him, despite his unfortunate everything.

Tyler: CAROLINE GO HOME

Caroline: Seriously? No, I'm having fun

She set her phone down with a huff, ignoring the buzz of a phone call. Of the two of them, Caroline was the one who personally knew what the Mikaelsons were capable of. Tyler had gotten off easy. She on the other hand was well aware that the human equivalent of napalm had taken a shine to her.

An idea occurred to her, and she pulled up Kol's YouTube page. Finding the upload from a little while ago, she started reading through the comments with a kind of fascinated horror, systematically swiping away further text messages from Tyler.

"Wait wait wait," she interrupted Enzo and Kol's mini debate about single-use appliances. "User 'findmydragonballs746' asked, 'Does she know about the time you lit the kitchen on fire?' No, she does not, tell me!"

Kol sat up straight. "Where did you find that? Hey, peeking at the comments is cheating!"

Caroline stuck her tongue out at him. "You're only saying that because they have such interesting things to say. User 'PsyLevi89' asked if I was aware of your terrible taste in countertops and your cow-patterned oven mitts. No, no I was not, please enlighten me, Kol." Her grin was rather toothy.

"Shots!" He pointed at the glasses at the end of the table. "We still have shots, let's have some shots, shall we?"

Enzo was clutching his ribs, laughing at his boyfriend's expense, but he managed to slide another trio of glasses over. "Is this the Panty Dropper, or the Wet Pussy? I can never tell."

Buying time, Kol squinted at the glasses. "Uh, Wet Pussy, it's the peachy tones."

"Oh my god," Caroline said to herself.

"Bottom's up!" Enzo called, and they threw them back.

Time started getting a little blurry from there, the drinks making her warm and giggly. It was fun teasing Kol, who would go from mortally offended to delighted from one breath to the next. His commenters were clearly trying to roast him in front of his boyfriend's bestie, bringing up everything from the time he called Giordano's deep dish pizza "bad lasagna" to his face ("A specifically Chicago crime," Caroline tutted), to the time he caught the waiter on fire in a bistro while trying to impress his date ("What is it with you and fire? You're not allowed near open flames around me."), and the incident where he got banned from Red Hot's hot dog stand for making too many dick jokes in line ("It must have been Johnnie's day off, he would have thought they were hysterical.").

"Okay," Kol said, while Caroline wiped tears of laughter from her eyes. "Okay, so we have," he squinted at the end of the table where only three shot glasses remained, "We have one more drink left! Enzo. Give me a blowjob."

Caroline shrieked. "At the table?" Clapped her hands over her eyes.

Enzo cracked up. "Care, Care, it's the drink!" She peeked through her fingers and found Enzo offering her a shot glass with a tall swirl of whipped cream rising from it. Trying to take it from him, her hands were batted away. "No, no, you have to drink it correctly. Watch me!"

Putting his hands behind his back, Enzo bent over until his mouth was above the cup. Picking it up with his lips, he tossed his head back, swallowing the shot. Only then did he take the glass and set it back down on the table. "Okay Caroline, your turn," he said, wiping cream from his face.

Kol had been staring at Enzo, but now he grinned widely at Caroline. "Yes, your turn. Which reminds me, time for another question."

Caroline was arranging her hands behind her back, a slightly more difficult task than it would be normally. "If it's my bra size, I will stab you and feel no remorse."

Kol's eyes widened innocently. "No, nothing like that, although you're clearly at least a 32C." He dodged a kick under the table. "Bottoms up, now!"

"I'll leave you bottoms up in a ditch," she muttered, before shaking back her hair, bending over the cup, and taking it between her lips.

As she tilted her head back, several things happened at once: someone slid into the seat next to her, warm where their leg pressed against hers, and Kol, sounding absolutely delighted, said, "Perfect timing. Last question: So what exactly is going on between you and Nik, Caroline?"

She nearly choked on the whipped cream, swallowed—barely tasting the amaretto and Irish cream—and then snatched the cup from her mouth. A sense of horrific irony filled her and she turned her head to the right. Klaus sat there, a mischievous little smile on his stupidly handsome face. He leaned on his elbow on the table, the warm scent of his cologne surrounding her and making her feel more off-center than the alcohol ever had.

"Yes, Caroline," he dimpled at her. "Do tell."

Setting her glass down deliberately, she turned to look at him. "You," she pronounced carefully, "Aren't supposed to be here."

"I'm not supposed to be in my own family's bar?" Klaus' smile if anything got wider.

He was being difficult. He did that. "Not while I'm here. I have a one Mikaelson per evening limit and that quota is being filled." Caroline gestured at Kol, who was practically vibrating with delight.

"Surely the bar is large enough for the both of us to share?"

Caroline wrinkled her nose petulantly. "You're not at the bar, you're in my booth." A small kick with her booted foot was applied to his ankle, and his knee hit the table underneath. A high-pitched noise kept escaping from Kol, and he had a death grip on Enzo's arm as if to keep him from interfering.

With a coaxing expression, Klaus' voice turned tempting. "Come now, let me have a drink with you."

"A drink?" A wicked impulse took hold of her, a way to annoy fancy pants Klaus with his soulful art, and his too-put-together outfits, and his… hair. His hair was annoying, he was annoying.

As she reached out to grab the shot still sitting untouched in front of Kol, she thought maybe she was even more drunk than she thought. Kol gave a slight squawk of indignation, but nearly choked on his tongue when Caroline offered the shot glass to Klaus.

"Blowjob?" she offered, eyebrows raised in challenge. There was absolutely no way that Klaus, fearsome head of the Mikaelson family and known snob would ever—

With a slight smirk that almost made Caroline feel like he knew what she was thinking, Klaus bent over her hand. It was suddenly hard to breathe under the direct eye contact Klaus kept with her, as he opened his mouth and wrapped his lips around the rim of the glass. There was a moment of feather-warm contact of his soft lips against her fingertips cradling the shot glass like an offering, making her heart race before he lifted it out of her hand and tipped his head back. The line of his neck was a temptation, the moles on his skin a kissable tease as he swallowed. As he pulled the glass from between his lips, a tiny sound escaped her.

Klaus dropped the empty shot glass into hers sitting on the table and licked his lower lip. "Delicious," he murmured, his gaze on her face hot and intent. It made her vision swim and her skin flush, and while she knew kissing him would be a terrible idea, it was still such a tempting prospect.

From the corner of her eye, Caroline could see Kol distractedly whack an equally stunned Enzo with a hand. "Pinch me," he whispered. Enzo groped a hand down to his leg and gave Kol a pinch savage enough that he jumped, slamming into the table.

His gaze flicked over to his brother, and Klaus pressed his lips together slightly. "Kol," he said in a somewhat bland greeting.

"Nik? Is that you?" Kol marveled. His eyebrows twitched down in irritation, and Klaus started to say something to him. Whatever it was, Caroline didn't catch it, the too-blurry feeling of being drunk mixing with the last shot and whipped cream, and making something lurch in her stomach.

"Ugh," she moaned, and tipped forward, planting her face in the juncture of Klaus' neck and shoulder. One hand rested on his thigh and the other gripped his lightweight sweater for balance.

Klaus froze. "Sweetheart?"

"Mmph," she mumbled against his warm skin. "Dun feel so good."

"Ah." Klaus began scooting back out of the booth, gently pulling her with him. "Let's get you somewhere a little more conducive to… that."

"I can take her," Enzo said, blinking blearily and trying to get out of the booth, while Kol grabbed the back of his shirt.

"S'okay, Enzo," she flapped her hand in his direction as she crawled out of the booth. Klaus would refuse to leave and then she'd have two men hovering over her and wouldn't that be annoying while they glared at each other. "Klaus smells nice."

Kol let out a little titter of laughter. "Well, as long as he smells nice." Wrapping his arms around Enzo's neck, he shoved his nose behind his ear. "Don't worry darling, I have a feeling Nik will take good care of Caroline," he murmured, like a devil on his shoulder.

Still, Enzo was clearly trying to do his best friend duty and he squinted at Klaus. "No funny business."

Caroline was trying to balance with the floor trying to roll out from under her, and Klaus made an amused little sound while he held her hands. Tipping her slightly, he scooped her up while she yelped, a hand beneath her knees and an arm curled around her back.

Klaus ignored her protests that she could walk while he leveled a look at Enzo. "She's safe with me." There was an odd man-to-man glance that passed between them—by which Klaus' eyes said he was taking Caroline and Enzo better make peace with that—and then Enzo leaned back against Kol. Klaus turned and headed toward the kitchen door.

"Please don't make knifey murder eyes at my best friend. I only have two and I'm fond of him," Caroline pouted.

Klaus shot her a look as he pushed past a gaping April on his way through the swinging doors. "How fond?"

She scoffed and clutched at the back of his neck. "You clearly need a best friend if you're asking dumb questions like that. Very fond."

Klaus walked them through the back of the house, people dodging out of his way no matter how much of a hurry they were in. Past a small kitchen, through a humid dishwashing section, and then backed them out a wedged open fire door out into the freezing air of an alley behind the bar. Caroline took a breath of the bracing air, and it was as if that was the signal her body had been waiting for to rebel.

"Down! Down!" Caroline gasped. Klaus barely had time to set her on her feet and steady her before she was bent over, emptying her stomach on the pavement. Her hair was caught in gentle fingers up away from her face, and she barely had a thought to spare for Klaus' thoughtful attention before the second wave hit and she was throwing up her toenails.

"Ugh," she moaned from her bent-over position, hands clenched on her knees. Her stomach seemed to be letting up. "I'm going to kill Kol."

"A commonly held sentiment, especially among family." Klaus' voice was dry. "I'm afraid there may be a line for the privilege."

Caroline closed her eyes as her stomach rolled ominously, before setting into an uneasy truce with the rest of her insides. When she opened her eyes, her focus was on Klaus' shoes, a very nice pair of brogues that were flecked with vomit. Embarrassment crawled under her skin in a muddle.

"Can you stand?" Klaus asked, fingers brushing against the back of her neck where he held her hair, making her shiver more than the cold.

"Why are you being so nice to me?" she couldn't help sounding grumpy. The fun alcohol feelings had worn off, and now all she was left with was the weird, swimmy nausea and too many emotions.

There was a pause, like Klaus was considering her question. "Is there a reason I wouldn't be nice to you, Caroline?"

"You're supposed to hate me forever for being a bitch, but being right about it." Was she sulking? She might have been sulking. Ever since she was little, people had been getting upset with her for her own brand of direct honesty. She'd certainly given him enough of that at the ball.

Annoyingly, he sounded amused. "Was that the impression my note gave you?"

"I hadn't thought about it," she lied as breezily as someone bent over their own puddle of puke could. It had been a month since the December ball, she wasn't supposed to still feel a flutter every time she read his words.

"I'm sure." That tone was still in his voice, and she scowled.

A creak from the fire door made her twist to see behind her. April dropped a tray stand into a standing position and then set a tray with a pitcher and a glass of water down on it carefully. She shot them a curious yet freaked-out glance and then bolted back inside, dropping a towel on the tray. A brick stuck in the opening of the door was all that kept it from slamming shut.

Klaus hummed softly and then offered her a hand. "Come on," he said coaxingly. Without thinking, Caroline set her hand in his, and he helped her upright, which made her stomach swim, but not as much as she feared. His hand in her hair released slowly, the blonde strands dragging through his fingertips.

"I fancy you," he'd said at the Galleria. "Isn't it obvious?" She'd been incredulous he'd said it then at that first almost date, and it seemed twice as laughable tonight, now that she'd hurked up all over his expensive shoes. Surely this flirtation, this usefulness as his muse, would be over now.

His hand in hers drew her toward the tray, and with a brush of his thumb on the back of her hand, he let her go to pick up and offer her the glass of water. She accepted it wordlessly, took a drink, and swished the water around before spitting it out to the side. Kept doing it until the water in the glass was gone, and she had to refill it from the pitcher. This she then drank down, the cold water a relief on her throat.

Hugging the empty glass to her chest, she breathed the cold air carefully, and this time there was no great upheaval, just the steam of her breath released into the night. "I think you should give April a raise," she said staunchly.

"Oh? Was that the…?" He gestured at the tray and then toward the door.

"Yeah." Caroline nodded. "She also likes to give Kol shit, which seems well-earned but dangerous in her occupation." The weird thing was he actually seemed to be listening to her opinion.

Setting the cup down, she wet the towel in the pitcher and wiped her face. She thought about scrubbing her tongue with it and then decided screw it, the only person that could judge her was Klaus, and she absolutely did not care what he thought. At all.

Still, his little smile when she did so made her flush warmly in the cold air.

"What are you doing here anyway? Don't you have, like, grandmas to pick-pocket and cigars to hold while you chuckle fiendishly to yourself, or something?" She tossed the towel down on the tray.

Klaus' dimples winked at her in his smiling face. Ugh. "I can't take a break for the night?"

Caroline rolled her eyes. "I guess."

He licked his lips. "Rebekah, actually. Sent me a link," and Caroline could feel her horror rising, "to Kol's charming channel. Imagine my surprise at seeing your face on the thumbnail."

"He didn't," she whined.

Fishing his phone out of his pants pocket, Klaus unlocked it and flipped the screen around. Caroline's face, mid-sentence and about to roast someone, was frozen on the thumbnail titled, 'Episode 64 - Part One: BFF Shot-gun Challenge.' A small notification was next to it and Caroline swayed forward to tap it. Instantly a new video started playing, Kol back in the booth with Caroline and Enzo sitting there looking a little tipsy. The title said Part Two.

"Seriously, he put the second video up already?" She shrieked quietly, stabbing at the pause button with her finger, cutting off his voice.

"I quite enjoyed your thoughts on my ego, Caroline. Perhaps I could convince you to share your opinions on my other attributes as well?"

Caroline hushed him with a frantic flap of her hand. Scrolling through the video with her fingertip, she paused when Klaus showed up. Her face was turned towards him and away from the camera for most of the spectacle, but the heat on Klaus' face was unmistakable. She watched herself crawl out of the booth and get swept away by Klaus, and then Kol spun around to the camera, an expression on his face like all his birthdays had come at once.

"I think that'll be it for tonight, Caroline has effectively dispatched my last drink, and I think she won this round. So the bet goes to Caroline. I think we'll be seeing a lot of her in the future." He waggled his eyebrows at the camera. "Let me know in the comments how you felt about surprise guest Nik—Klaus to you cretins—and the heart eyes he was making at our guest of honor. I'm out, cheers, gastro-knobs!" A screen reminding her to like, subscribe, and turn on her notifications was stitched on the end, and then the video ended.

Straightening, Caroline pressed her hands together, then pressed her fingertips to her mouth. "Can I borrow a knife? It'll be quick."

Klaus grinned. "Unfortunately, Bekah will be most irate if you leave her with Kol's half of the family business. I'm quite sure your clever mind is up to the task of making him suffer."

"Ugh!" Caroline threw her hands down in disgust. Her mind was still muddled, but revenge was an old friend. "If only we brought my car. I'd have grease pencils and one of those compass-protractor doodleybobs. Which one's his car?"

His gaze was intrigued. "The red Ferrari out front."

She scoffed. "Of course it is." Pressing her lips together, she squinted into the distance and rubbed her arms with her hands. She was getting cold out here. "This will take some planning."

Klaus ran his tongue against his lower lip, making her blink distractedly at him. When did they get so close? "Lovely Caroline, always so much more than a pretty face."

His own face was a heart-stopping study in want as his gaze lingered on her lips. It was insane, she must have the worst breath this side of a fish trawler, and every line of his body was a declaration that if she would lean in just a little, he would drink from her in bacchanalia. Surely something pagan and unholy would sweep in on the wings of temptation and carry her away more deeply than the alcohol ever did.

An oddly disconnected thought, that, of course, Klaus, with his schemes, he who orchestrated the revenge that poured out on the Salvatores and their familia for months unending until there was nothing left but ash, of course he would be constant in his chosen affections, devotion tethered to a north star of his choosing. Klaus never walked away from anything but bodies.

What did that say about her, that almost feral desire pulled on her gut and lit a fire under her skin? She shivered in the cold air, and it was not the snowflakes drifting down to dust the curls of his hair that made her quake.

Snow? It was snowing? She glanced up at the white flakes, and time rushed back in to fill the moment that had stretched almost to a breaking point. Klaus cursed softly.

"I ought to get you back inside, where it's warm," he said reluctantly. The moment was slipping away, and Caroline found in vino veritas that she wished it wouldn't.

Her hands were freezing—had they really been out here that long?—when she pulled out her phone and fumbled with the unlock screen. In a moment, she was shoving it into the hand Klaus had stretched toward her. Something briefly surprised flashed across his face as he took it.

"Put your number in," Caroline said, her teeth starting to chatter. She rubbed her arms in earnest as he typed on her phone. When he handed it back, she saved it as Klaus, which he made a slight noise at. Tapping out a quick text, she sent it to him, and she heard his phone vibrate in his pocket.

"There, now you… have mine." She swallowed, trying to shake off that heat that now roiled in her stomach where nausea had been. God, when had that faded? He was distracting, too distracting.

Caroline went to push past him to the door, and a hand on her arm stopped her. Glancing down at it, and then up the bare few inches into his face was once again almost too much.

"May I call or text you?" he asked softly.

"Yeah," she said equally softly. "I'd like that." Thinking about why was something she'd put off for tomorrow. Or maybe til spring. The apartment would need a deep clean, wouldn't it?

His fingers lifted from her arm, and they headed back inside. Everyone rushing around the kitchen was making a good show of trying not to stare as they passed through. Caroline gave them points for effort.

Enzo and Kol were still in the booth, exchanging drunk sloppy kisses that were nonetheless very enthusiastic, hands somewhere underneath the table that she shuddered to imagine what they were doing. She grimaced and knocked loudly on the table. "Hey weirdos, break it up."

Twin expressions of irritation turned to face her, each clearing when they saw her standing there, cross-armed and grumpy, Klaus at her elbow. "Gorgeous!" Enzo lurched upright, blearily reaching out to take her hand. "All good?

She gave him a wane smile. "I think I'm ready to be unconscious. Are you two going back to yours?"

"Fuck, I hope so," Kol muttered, leaning against his boyfriend's back. He was giving Klaus the weirdest look.

"Yeah," Enzo replied. "I can call you an Uber?"

Klaus shifted next to her as he picked up his jacket and scarf. "I will see Caroline home." Her stomach flipped at the thought of being stuck in such a small space with Klaus, even for the maybe twenty minutes it would take to get home. Still, it was an odd realization to find that she would feel safer with Klaus—head of the Mikaelson syndicate and ruthless enforcer of his domain—than she would with some Uber driver at nearly midnight while still drunker than she'd like.

Enzo seemed to sober up. "You good with that?"

Caroline nodded, waved her hand dismissively. "It's fine, he had his chance to leave me in a ditch." Pausing, she turned and poked him in the arm. "No takebacks."

A smile tugged at his lips. "I wouldn't dream of it." He was looking at her, warm and fond again, and she was going to come out of her skin if he didn't stop. She looked back at Enzo quickly and gave him a hug.

"Be careful," he whispered in her ear. "Big, bad wolf there wants a bite."

Humming acknowledgment, Caroline let him go. With pageant perfect smile in place, she bared her teeth at Kol while she gathered up her jacket. "Kol, it was such an experience meeting you. I will be seeing you later." His face, which had been spreading in a grin, froze.

She waved her fingers at him as she walked off, and she could hear Enzo mutter, "Uh oh," as she rounded the corner

Their jackets were on by the time they made it out the front door, and Klaus led her over to a black Maserati and opened the door for her. Caroline paused before getting in the car, an odd little thrill going through her fuzzy mind as she was reminded of a fact about herself: she may be a strong, independent woman that don't need no man, but she still really liked it when Klaus Mikaelson opened doors for her.

"Thank you," she murmured.

After shutting the door, Klaus came around the car and got in. Soon the heaters were blasting on high, her still prickling fingers held up to the vents, air noisy over the soft jazz playing on the stereo. He pulled out of the parking lot and started in the direction of the apartment she shared with Tyler.

Jesus, Tyler. She hadn't thought about him in hours, despite the occasional vibrations from her pocket. Shame curdled in her stomach, remembering the way she'd thought about kissing Klaus in the alley. Tyler hadn't even crossed her mind, what kind of girlfriend was she?

The tired kind, she sighed as she thought. The fights were getting a little more frequent each month. One could argue that she'd just made everything worse. There was no way Tyler wouldn't see that video on Kol's channel with the fuss he made. When the episode with Enzo and Kol going on a date came out, he'd slammed home in a tizzy, accusing her friend of sleeping with the enemy.

Letting Klaus Mikaelson do shots out of the palm of her hand would be… so much worse. And while he didn't have the right to dictate to her how she spent her time, he would probably see it as her not being on Tyler's side of a conflict he was fighting. It's too bad Tyler couldn't see she was picking him, she just wasn't going to fight his battles.

She must have been making a face, because Klaus kept glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. "Penny for your thoughts?"

"Ugh. Tyler. He's gonna be… mad."

There was a slight pause as Klaus probably weighed what that was worth. "Kol could take the videos down?"

Caroline grimaced. "No, it's already done. Plus, I'm pretty sure that the second one of you posts something that it goes in some government database somewhere. Tyler's a bit… obsessed." That wasn't like, giving away information was it? They had to know they were being monitored.

Klaus' voice was smugly amused. "Yes. He has the unfortunate luck to consistently raid empty warehouses, I believe it's wearing on him."

Pressing her lips together, she tried not to giggle, she really did. Apparently, she wasn't all that successful, because Klaus' dimples deepened as her noises escaped.

"That's terrible, you should leave him a present, he's trying so hard," she said primly, leaning back in her seat now that her fingers had defrosted. "My mom always said you have to reward people for their efforts."

"They're still alive," Klaus groused, making a turn.

"Appreciation," she said, poking his arm and trying to ignore the lean muscle underneath. "Start with oh, say, April. Maybe no family dinners?"

"You're very keen on this April thing. Why the sudden interest in my waitstaff, love?"

She ignored his question and turned partway in her seat to look at him, leaned back against the window. "Is it true you throw knives at each other at dinner?"

Trailing his eyes down her, he quickly looked back at the road. "When the occasion calls for it."

She wrinkled her nose. "Siblings are so weird. Attempted murder as a love language. Elena and Jeremy used to—" Cut herself off. Those were probably the last people Klaus wanted to hear about. "Sorry."

Klaus' hands tightened and then relaxed on the steering wheel. "They are a part of your history, Caroline," he said carefully. "And I am interested in more than just the surface of you."

"You know, it's funny," Caroline said after a minute, playing with the zipper on the end of her coat. "When I was a kid I tried so hard to be Elena, who was just so effortlessly perfect. Everyone loved her, everyone, including me." Blowing a breath out, she stared out the window at the buildings.

"And then," she continued, "Her parents died in a car crash and she just went a bit nuts with grief and ended up hanging out with the Salvatore brothers. That whole bid for power each of them made after Giuseppe died was just both of them trying to be more impressive to her because she wouldn't pick a brother. She made such a mess of hers and everyone's lives that I've been trying not to be her ever since."

How safe Tyler had seemed, a federal agent and politician's son, the guy who got out of their neighborhood and was doing something good with his life. How that had all come crumbling down the night of her birthday when Klaus had been waiting for her in their apartment. She'd been ignoring the smaller cracks in the fantasy for so long that one touch broke the whole thing.

She was still holding a teensy grudge about that.

"Sweetheart, you are strong and fearless, and I don't believe for a single moment that you could ever fit your light in as small a box as the insipid creature I found with her suitors that night." He paused the car at a red light and glanced at her, face serious. "The last of their wretched family, and they were still fighting one another for the dubious privilege of falling on their sword for her."

Caroline swallowed. It was rumored Klaus had walked into their family home and killed them all personally for their part in Henrik's death. Some small part of her was still sad for Elena, sad things had ended the way they did. But they'd all had to pay a price for the Salvatore's mad grab for Mikaelson territory, and their alliance with Bill's gang. The Mikaelsons had wiped all of them from the face of the earth.

Save for one.

"If I've learned anything of you these past months, Caroline Forbes, it is that your devotion is singular in its focus." Klaus paused, shifting to study her face briefly before glancing back at the road, the sound of the windshield wipers a soft counterpoint to the snow that was getting thicker as time wound on. "Such loyalty is a rare precious thing, and for all the Salvatore's bluster, they never quite grasped the difference between being willing to die for someone, and fighting for them. "Yours," he tipped his head at her as the light turned green, "I believe, is the superior of the two."

Her mouth was dry as they pulled up in front of her building, Klaus putting the vehicle in park. He turned to look at her, their eyes meeting for a long moment.

"I just… don't want to make the same mistakes she did," Caroline said finally. Whatever they were talking about now, it sure wasn't Elena's choices.

The corner of Klaus' mouth tipped up knowingly. "Making the same choices is not a guarantee of making the same mistakes."

In a moment of drunk clarity, Caroline had the wildest feeling of affinity for Klaus. Some days she didn't think about it more than others, but the knowledge that when the choices had been presented to her, she had chosen murder as a solution sat with her. It was still the choice that made sense to her, the choice that gave her mom more time. Maybe Klaus was making his decisions because he liked who he was under that crimson on his hands, but she understood being wired to look at your problems differently.

She couldn't really throw stones at him and his family for taking expedient paths to solutions. Which was not quite the same thing as Tyler's penchant for taking shortcuts.

Still, he didn't really have to give her that look like he knew what mistakes she was trying not to make right this second.

"Ugh," she huffed, turning away from him, snapping, "Well I'm making these choices." She struggled with the seatbelt for a moment before it unclicked. Going to grab her scarf and get out, Caroline's hand closed on nothing. Patted her pockets, which were empty save for her keys.

"Lose something?" he asked, still looking amused. She flashed him an irritated look.

"My scarf. I think I left it."

"Mm. I'll have them collect it. In the meantime…" Klaus pulled off the scarf draped loosely around his neck and with a quick little motion, had it wrapped around her neck. Caroline froze in surprise, and he quickly had it tied under her chin. "There. Keep it."

"Klaus," she said flatly, "This is Burberry." The ginger warm scent of his cologne drifted up from the fabric, still warm from being next to his skin.

He tugged the scarf tassels and smiled that pleased, boyish smile at her. "It looks better on you." The soft sincerity in his voice strangled her protests and she stared at him. "Good night, Caroline. Do let me know when you're inside."

"S-Sure" She wet her lips and his gaze flicked down to them. The extremely dumb thought to kiss him goodbye—like this was a date—floated up through her brain, and that got her moving out of the car. "Good night!" she tossed behind her before closing the door.

The sidewalks were mostly clear as she hurried up the front steps of the two-floor walk-up, the top floor of which she shared with Tyler. Inside the narrow stairwell, Caroline paused halfway up the steps and leaned against the wall. An illicit feeling filled her as she buried her nose in the scarf, pressing the soft fabric to her face with both hands.

She gave herself ten seconds to stand and breathe, to fill the strange little need that had filled her ever since Klaus first sat down in that booth. It was probably some three-hundred-dollar bottle of fancy cologne that she'd never heard of. Surely that must be the magic in it that made her want to press her mouth to his neck and draw that scent in, making something low in her belly clench.

Her moment over—twelve seconds, but who's counting?—she turned and finished mounting the stair to the landing, unlocked the door, and went in. She flicked on a light in the living room and heard a car drive down the road. Fishing her phone out of her back pocket, she found the new conversation with Klaus and messaged him.

[11:32 PM]

Caroline: I'm in safe

Klaus: Everything okay?

Caroline: Don't text and drive, Klaus

Klaus: I'm still parked out front, but if you need me to come up…

Caroline: OMG GO HOME weary-emoji But tell me when you get there. Snow's getting worse

Klaus: As you wish.

This time there was the distinct sound of ice grinding as a car pulled away from the curb. Thirty minutes later, as she was lying there—pretending she wasn't staying up until he messaged her—the phone buzzed.

[12:05 AM]

Klaus: I'm home, but I do not believe I am safe. Rebekah accosted me at the door.

Caroline: ? Are you bleeding?

Klaus: Not if I pass on that you are invited to lunch on a day of your choosing next week.

She thought for a minute. Did she really want to embroil herself with more of the Mikaelson family? While Kol had a reputation as a vicious, chaotic little gremlin, Rebekah had a reputation as a vicious, vindictive, judgy bitch outside her cheery influencer Instagram profile. And the less said about Elijah the better.

Well. Caroline knew an even judgier bitch.

[12:07 AM]

Caroline: I'm only free on Tuesday when I'm meeting my bff Bonnie for brunch at 11. She's welcome to meet us at Maple & Ash

Klaus: She says she will see you there.

Caroline: Great! Now I'm going to bed. Good night

Klaus: Good night, love.

The next morning, when Caroline stumbled out of bed, sober and feeling gross, she found Tyler asleep on the couch, and she had a brief moment of lucidity. Her relationship was fracturing beneath her fingers, and if she didn't at least try to hold on, she was going to regret it, regret not trying. Just because Klaus flashed some admittedly gorgeous dimples at her and hadn't murdered her wasn't a good enough reason to break up with her boyfriend, was it? No, of course not, not in just a couple of months. She and Tyler just need to talk, to work on their problems.

But she kept her brunch date with Rebekah, and when, after a meal spent sniping at and complimenting each other in equal measure, Rebekah left with both their numbers, Caroline just kept joining her for lunch. And was wrangled into more guest spots on Kol's channel, although she refused to comment on whatever this 'Klaroline' thing was that some people were making reaction videos about.

And on the edges hovered Klaus, his flirty texts a constant to her days, her occasional run-ins with him while he accompanied his siblings a secret delight.

Because even though the pedantic little weirdos were all clearly unhinged crime lords masquerading as social media darlings once you spent any amount of time with them—no one but the mob has that many minions, Klaus clearly had blood and not paint on his collar one day, and Kol kept too many baseball bats in his trunk next to the can of kerosene for him to just be an aficionado—they all just kept gravitating back into her orbit.

There was something about all of them that was like being adopted by a bag of feral cats. Rebekah was fascinated by her job and despite insisting she had no patience for it, would listen to Caroline complain about her latest catastrophe at any hour. She once found a pastry chef at 8:30 at night on the fly for Caroline after The Drake's pastry chef has an accident with the blowtorch that nearly shut down the kitchen for an hour. Bekah refused to take credit but she did come have dinner at the Drake's Chef's Table with Caroline the next night.

Caroline had to be very careful about which problems she complained to Kol about because he attempted to solve them with extreme prejudice and blunt-force trauma. He was instantly what she imagined what having a big brother would be like, she imagined. It was more than nice, it felt weirdly like she belonged.

And Tyler stayed mad about it. She'd tell him about their outings, but nothing that could help him. Trivial things, behind-the-scenes tidbits of Cook Out With Your Cck Out, mani-pedis with Bekah and Bonnie, sure. Repaying that bright belonging feeling, that comradery, that tiny taste of family with betrayal sat ill with her and she refused. Caroline started carefully checking her bags for bugs, feeling an odd paranoia that she couldn't sweep away. She'd finally found one in her purse, a couple of days before their breakup. She'd thought one would just be tossed in the pockets, a cheap electronics store model that Tyler had bought himself to spy on them. Imagine her surprise when it was sewn in the lining, proof that he'd used government funds to do so.

As Caroline shoveled dirt onto the tarp stretched across the concrete, she could see that October night Klaus officially walked into her life as a spotlight on the beginning of the end for her and Tyler's relationship, but that January evening at Talbot's was the first real nail in the coffin. Every shopping trip with Bekah and every culinary adventure with Kol was another one hammered in until the casket was sealed and Tyler broke first under the pressure of it.

A groan to her left interrupted her musing and made Caroline pause in her excavation of the rectangular hole in the concrete floor. Next to her, Klaus dug his shovel into the dirt and rested his arms on the end of the handle. Tyler, zip tied firmly to a heavy wooden chair, was coming to finally, blinking in confusion at her in the glare of the work lights shining down on the three of them.

"Caroline?" he asked groggily. Attempting to get up, he was stopped by his restraints. As he stared at them, tugging ineffectually, alertness swam back into his gaze. Looking back at her, he took in the gravelike proportions of the cavity broken in the concrete.

"So this is it, huh?" he spat. "I guess you murderers really do belong together."

Caroline rolled her eyes. If he expected her to feel shame this far down the road, he had another thing coming.

"Tyler, how good of you to join us." Klaus' smile was as sharp as a blade as he boosted himself out of the hole. "I was hoping there would be time for a little chat before the main event."

"If you think I'm telling you anything about the investigation, you're outta your goddamn mind."

Klaus' chuckled, a dangerous little sound. Disappearing into the darkness that surrounded the floodlights, his footsteps were soft on the concrete. Tyler tried to twist in his chair, but both his arms were anchored to the armrests and he couldn't move very far.

A screeching sound filled the air, and Klaus came back dragging a chair. He set it up close to the front and side of Tyler's chair and sat down on it backward, arms resting on the backrest as he looked at Tyler. Caroline's lips twitched in amusement at her husband's sense of theatre, making sure she had a good view.

"How willfully ignorant you must be to presume I am unaware of everything in those files." Klaus' smile was mocking. "Head of the investigation, and you've been chasing your tail for three years. Wiretaps unsuccessful, fruitless stakeouts. Nothing to show for your efforts but empty warehouses. Well," he bent a conspiratorial look at Tyler. "Almost empty."

Tyler tried to rock forward towards Klaus, the back legs of the heavy wooden chair coming off the ground an inch, zip ties holding firm. "You fucking shit! I told them your little creeper drawings of Caroline were a calling card. I know it's her, even without her face!"

Caroline, who had been studying the dimensions of the pit and scraping the corners clean, jerked her head up in surprise. "His little what?"

"Sweetheart," Klaus started, only to be interrupted.

"He's been leaving drawings of you at the places we raid," Tyler said vindictively. "An empty room with nothing but a sketch in the middle. They started after you were on Kol's dumb show."

She leveled an incredulous look at Klaus.

He put his booted foot on one of the braces of the chair legs and pushed down, halting Tyler's attempts to topple himself. Smiling mischievous as he looked at her, he shrugged. "You did tell me to leave him a present for his efforts."

Rapidly shuffling through her memories of the conversations she and Klaus had had that January, a fuzzy one from inside his car during her drunken trip home floated up from the ether. She groaned. "I was drunk."

"What?" Tyler squawked. Caroline flapped an impatient hand at him.

"Your little 'Ha-ha-ha, I like your girlfriend—"

"Ex," Klaus insisted.

"—Ex-girlfriend' stunt better not land you in jail, Klaus Mikaelson," she huffed, crawling over the lip of the concrete and taking the hand he offered to pull her up. Once standing, he tugged her hand toward him, making her step close. Threading the fingers of her hand through his, he kissed the back of her dirt-smeared hand, looked up through his lashes at her fondly. Her answering smile was a little grumpy, which only seemed to please him more.

"Unfortunately," Klaus said low, like a secret, "Tyler's superiors don't feel there's enough evidence to support his theory and speculate he's taking the breakup a little personally." His little smirk only seemed to incense Tyler.

"You and your whole stupid family stole my girlfriend," Tyler seethed.

"No one stole me!" Caroline protested, at the same time Klaus said, "We're not giving her back."

Pulling her hand from her husband's, she smacked him on the shoulder with the back of her fingers. "Klaus and I didn't even go on a date until October, and we broke up in May. When you walked out, I'd like to mention."

Klaus treated her to a sideways glance. "So you admit your birthday dinner was a date?"

Caroline realized what she'd said and instantly tried to backpedal. "I—no! No. That was. A meal that we shared."

"And the theatre," Klaus added.

She ignored him. "And New Year's was our first real date and not a celebratory occasion that you seem to think requires extravagant gifts."

"I recall giving you a gift on New Year's," Klaus said slyly, and Caroline flushed, remembering how he'd peeled the silk dress off her and the hours he'd spent whispering filth with his mouth on her clit.

Tyler made a sound of disgust. "Tie me to a chair and murder me, but I do not need the details of your sex life. Gross."

There was a still pause, before Klaus moved, one of his knives appearing in his hand. With a quick jab, the blade sank into Tyler's shoulder and he twisted it, the arm bone popping out of the joint. Klaus pulled the blade out, and blood started to soak the arm of Tyler's suit.

"Fuck!" Tyler yelled, breath hissing between his clenched teeth, one of his hands twitching desperately while the other clenched the end of the armrest.

"Would you like to know your problem, Tyler Lockwood? Your inability to appreciate the gifts you are given." The joviality was stripped from his voice, leaving behind a soft fury. "The greatest gift of my life walked into the room that night in your apartment, and where were you? Hiding, like a coward."

It had been her birthday, Caroline remembered, so so clearly.

She had been expecting a fun lunch with her friends, followed that evening by dinner with her boyfriend and birthday sex. And then Tyler called after arriving at work, an emergency problem on a case, and he had to take a trip. No, he wouldn't be back for her birthday.

So Caroline called her friends and rescheduled, planned herself a mini-birthday bash, put on her sparkliest dress and a tiara, and went out. She picked a fun nightclub, and with Bonnie and Enzo in tow, they'd all gotten pleasantly buzzed and danced the night away.

When the Uber dropped her off in front of the apartment around 3 in the morning, she was enjoyably warm and happy to be home.

"Yeah, guys, I'm getting into the house as we speak," she said into the phone, mounting the steps and pulling her keys out of her tiny clutch. "Thanks again for going out with me tonight, it really made today not suck." They'd all stayed on the phone while their respective Ubers dropped them off, and Caroline was the last one home.

"Of course, Care, it's our favorite day of the year," Bonnie said drowsily. Caroline smiled, remembering the elementary school her that had declared everyone's favorite day her birthday. Enzo had been inducted into the tradition when they adopted him in sophomore year, a wary fifteen-year-old freshly emigrated from London to live with relatives after the death of his parents.

Enzo hummed in agreement. "Work will be hell tomorrow, but it was worth it to see you smiling, Gorgeous."

Caroline paused at the door. "What are you talking about? I smile!"

"I don't mean your 'I'm coping' smile, I mean your 'I'm happy' smile."

Holding her phone between her shoulder and ear, Caroline unlocked the door. "Work has just been… busy. Tyler's been gone at work a lot." Opening the door to the tiny foyer, she walked in, closed it, and leaned against the door. "But I'm happy, really I am."

There was a pause. "Okay gorgeous, if you're sure."

"That's all we want, Care," Bonnie chimed in.

"Okay guys, well, I'm inside and I'm going to bed. I'll talk to you later." They chorused goodbyes and Caroline hung up the phone. The lock screen was illuminated for a moment, a picture of Tyler and her from a year ago, smiling at each other, before it went dark.

Caroline sighed, tucked her phone into her bra, and then used the door to balance while she pulled her strappy heels off. Her feet were sore and the laminate tile—normally a source of irritation to her decorating sensibilities—felt cool on her soles. Carrying her shoes, she walked into the dark living room and switched on a lamp. The soft glow illuminated the room, and by the window, something moved.

Letting out a small shriek, Caroline chucked her shoes in that direction as hard as she could. One shoe went wide, and the other shoe the man ducked. It smacked into the frame of the window, bouncing off harmlessly.

They stared at each other for a moment. Honestly, Caroline would have preferred a burglar, because she knew that face. She just hoped never to see it in person.

"I will admit to that being a first," he said, tugging on the sleeve of his jacket. His hands were empty, but that didn't mean anything. A knife could appear in either one as if summoned. He liked the kill up close and personal, everyone always said.

The fear of that had sent her down a dark path one night.

"Well, if you pull that creeper act with everyone, I will admit to that being a shock." Adrenaline was a heavy pulse in her blood and she tried to breathe normally. He couldn't have picked some other night to break into her apartment, one where alcohol hadn't worn the locks off her brain-to-mouth filter?

He tilted his head. "Do you know who I am?"

She gave him a flat look. "Yes, Klaus Mikaelson, I know who you are." Took a deep breath. "Are you here to kill me?"

An incredulous little frown flickered across his unfairly handsome face. "On your birthday?" He made a little gesture at her party dress. "Do you really think that low of me?"

Caroline didn't even blink. "Yes."

He hummed thoughtfully. "When my minion informed me of your existence, I thought you unfortunate collateral damage. But perhaps you can be of another use…" He seemed to be mulling it over in his head.

"Get to the point, what are you doing in my house?" Sassing the prime murderhobo of Chicago was probably not a good move but she was very tired and wanted a shower before bed. Besides, she refused to be bullied in her own damn living room.

Something glinted in his eyes, his lips twitching. Putting his hands in his pants pockets, he seemed very relaxed in her small living room. The loveseat and coffee table separated them, and still, Caroline had no doubt that if the head of the Mikaelson Family syndicate wanted her dead, she would be in moments. The only time she'd used a knife before, she'd had the element of surprise.

"Tyler Lockwood's pretty girlfriend has teeth." Klaus smiled when her frown deepened. "Tell me, Caroline, do you know where your errant suitor is?"

She stared at him. "Wait, what?" 'Tyler's girlfriend?' This was not the conversation she could have ever expected to have with Klaus. "What do you want with Tyler?"

"Your Special Agent Tyler Lockwood has been attempting an undercover operation in my organization for the past few weeks. It has been amusing watching him accept unsanctioned favors, but now I require a favor in return." He slowly paced around the loveseat and Caroline watched him like a snake.

"Tyler wouldn't…" she trailed off. He'd been gone too much recently, secretive with his work phone. Caroline had started to wonder if he was cheating on her, but trying to be an undercover agent in the mob? And while people did say Klaus would play with lives like puppets, no one ever said he was a liar. Usually the opposite, wielding the truth like a noose with which to hang yourself.

"What favors?" Her voice sounded wooden, even to her.

Klaus shrugged nonchalantly. "Money. He appears to require a great deal of it."

Caroline's face twisted in confusion. "What does he need money for, we're fi—" she broke off, resignation filling her. "His mom."

Every time they'd visited recently, his mother had been slightly off. Caroline had left to use the restroom one time and come back to hear them whispering about losing the house. She'd tried to talk to him about it, but he said it was just an accounting error and he'd fixed it for her. So much for that.

The little smile that tilted his lips seemed proud. "Yes, Mrs. Lockwood does seem to have squandered her late husband's savings. A woman used to the finer things in life become quite piteous when denied them."

"So, what favor does he owe you in return?" Caroline swallowed. She would yell at Tyler when he got home, it was fine.

"Ah. That's between Tyler and me. Unless…" he trailed off.

"Ugh, unless what?" Enzo would have called him a dramatic twat and he would have been right.

His smile was like a trap snapping closed. "Unless you'd like to take on his debt? Since he's… nowhere to be found?"

She shot him a withering glare. "We both know I don't owe you or your family anything. I made sure of that."

Klaus' gaze sharpened. "Why? What could you possibly be to me?"

Blinking, she was stunned. "What do you mean, 'What could I be to you?' Klaus, you're wearing our history around your neck."

There was a brief moment where his eyes widened, and then he covered the ground between them in two steps. Firming her chin, Caroline glared at him. If he thought this was going to intimidate her, he had another thing coming.

Instead, he studied her face, eyes trailing down a curl fallen from her up-do. Ran his tongue against his lower lip consideringly. "Caroline. Caroline Forbes."

"Yes." Something was realigning behind his eyes, brows furrowed as he looked down the scant few inches between them.

"Caroline Forbes who killed her father to save her mother," he said softly.

She clenched her jaw and nodded. Thinking of her mother hurt, but she'd bought them three more years together. Thinking of her father, however, was much more complicated.

Bill Forbes had left them when she was young, although old enough to understand concepts like 'gay' and 'new family.' The end of the constant fighting in the house was a relief, at least until she turned into a teenager and took up the torch. Her father's constant broken promises of time and attention were something she was ashamed to remember taking out on her mother. Finally, Mom had sat her down at the end of a shift, sheriff's uniform of their small, gerrymandered district untucked, with a police folder in her hand.

"You're not supposed to see this," Liz had said, "But I know you won't believe me otherwise."

With shaky hands, Caroline flipped open the police reports on local gang activity, and the mugshots that accompanied the Known Members page. There was Bill, right at the top of the hierarchy with Stephen, heads of a gang called the Hunters. There was supposition about them looking for more territory and alliances, some suspected linked crimes. It wasn't good.

Denial had fought with evidence, and evidence had won. She'd shut the folder and stopped calling her father.

The year she'd turned eighteen, life was up-ended. Elena's parents died in a car crash, and she'd lost herself. Started hanging out in the cemetery, writing in her diary, and pushing away her friends. That's where she'd met Stefan Salvatore, fellow journaler and weirdo, and younger son of Giuseppe Salvatore, head of his mafia family that ruled everything in their neighborhood. And from Stefan, she'd met Damon, older son and all-around asshole.

Caroline thought they'd settle into a weird love triangle, but then Giuseppe had died unexpectedly. "Heart attack," almost everyone said. "Poison," a few people whispered. Either way, he was gone, and in the power vacuum, his sons each tried for the throne. Support was split down the middle, and in an effort to prove himself the more worthy brother, Damon started making a grab at the Mikaelson territory that butted up against the part of his.

There were small skirmishes between foot soldiers for a few weeks until Damon allied with a gang on the fringes: the Hunters. Caroline never knew who came up with the plan of a drive-by at Henrik's after-school music lessons, but the youngest Mikaelson's death started a war that washed across the wards from the Mikaelson's territory.

With a systematic ferocity, they hunted down everyone involved down to the family line in mere days, not differentiating between Stefan's territory and Damon's, until the only ones left were the Salvatore's cowering in their mansion together with Elena… and Bill, who was in hiding.

And Caroline and her mother.

When the cold man in a suit showed up at their door, Liz was resting from another migraine, and Caroline stiffly invited him inside out of the pouring rain to the living room. He'd looked around their living room, humble yet comfortable, with an almost inhuman neutrality before getting to the point.

"I'll be frank," Elijah Mikaelson said, "Your father owes us a life. If he cannot be found, we'll take… other options."

"You mean us." Caroline's hands trembled in a barely concealed rage. "Even though Bill doesn't care about us."

He smiled thinly. It wasn't a nice smile. "We're open to trying various levers until one pushes him out of hiding." When she glared at him in open disgust, his spine seemed to bend a little. "You don't have to do anything, just tell us where he is."

"What, so you can torture him?"

"Does it matter?" Elijah tilted his head.

"He's my dad," she said roughly.

This seemed to amuse him for some reason. "As you said, he doesn't care about you."

Caroline looked away, anger and hurt knots in her throat that threatened to choke her.

Pulling a slim card case from his pocket, Elijah offered her a business card. When she refused to take it from him, he set it on the coffee table. "Twenty-four hours, Miss Forbes. Or we'll start pulling at threads."

After he had gone, Caroline sat there, making and discarding plans for two precious hours, before calling Bonnie and Enzo to ask for help. To their credit, after a brief explanation, they only tried to talk her out of it once, and then agreed to help.

Which is how she found herself gently shaking her mother awake, and asking her softly where she could find her dad. It took convincing, another priceless hour gone before Liz would admit she knew of a bolthole or two that Bill had used before.

"Caroline, whatever you're planning, please just let those monsters handle it," her mom had whispered, pale and wane from pain. They had an appointment with a neurologist next week to get to the bottom of her migraines, and Caroline was trying not to panic until then.

She had agreed to let the monsters handle it. By the time Enzo pulled up in his Uncle Dalton's old pickup that night—Bonnie perched on the middle seat—Caroline had gathered everything on her mental list and had it in two duffle bags.

"You don't have to do this," Caroline said, one seated in the cab, dripping from the rain still pouring down. "You can go home and—"

"Gorgeous, hush." Enzo put the truck in gear and drove off. Beside him, Bonnie scoffed.

"Elena wouldn't let us help, Care, and look where…" She trailed off, swallowed, and firmed her chin. "So, let us help you stop this."

Grateful, Caroline had pulled out a map of Chicago and directed Enzo to the first place. Making sure they weren't followed made them double back and take the wide ways around. It took a little while to find, but it was empty. The same with the second.

The third there was a crack of light showing in the dirty, painted windows of the apparently abandoned two-floor apartment building. It didn't stand out among its also abandoned neighbors, and Caroline had had to creep up under cover of the rain.

The knife handle was wet in her hand as she stepped onto the porch carefully and knocked. "Dad, it's Caroline. It's just me," she called, feeling sick and sweaty, even though the rain had been freezing all night.

"Caroline?" she heard him say, before undoing several locks and jerking the door open.

She struck, knife a frantic jab at his neck that somehow connected. The surprise and betrayal on his face as she jerked the knife out, she would take to her own grave. Blood sprayed, a red splatter on her cold face that felt nearly hot. Clutching at his throat, Bill collapsed, and Caroline rushed in, dragging him away from the door and closing it.

Dropping to her knees next to his head, she took his hand as his blood made a puddle for her to kneel in. "I'm sorry," she sobbed while he gasped, "I'm sorry, they were gonna kill Mom and torture you, I'm sorry."

Resignation filled his eyes, and he squeezed her hand once. A minute later it was quiet, and Caroline gave herself another one to shake through the tears and adrenaline. And then she stood up and went to the door. Pulling a small flashlight from her pocket, she flashed it twice down the road and then went back inside.

Soon, Enzo and Bonnie were letting themselves in, carrying a roll of construction plastic and one of her duffle bags, respectively. She'd washed her hands and face in the grubby bathroom and had been knocking on the wooden floorboards. They glanced at Bill's body, hands crossed on his still chest, and then examined her.

"Alright, gorgeous?" When Caroline looked up at Enzo, whatever he saw in her face made him wince. "Right, ask a stupid question…" He bent down next to the body and started unwrapping plastic.

"I think we can hide him here," Caroline said, pointing to the floor. "There's a hollow that I think is big enough in the middle."

Bonnie stepped forward. "That's my cue." As she walked past Caroline, she squeezed her arm, and Caroline tried to shore up her own emotions until after. Pulling a crowbar from the duffle, Bonnie started to carefully pry up the floorboards.

Caroline went and retrieved a handsaw from the duffle, and knelt down next to her father's body. Enzo watched her arrange him. "You sure you want to do it this way?" he asked softly. "We could just… call them?"

Throat tight, Caroline shook her head. "No. I have to prove they can't fuck with me." It took several minutes, but soon her task was done. They rolled him onto the plastic and dragged him over to where Bonnie had revealed a deep trench in the concrete. Keeping a tight fist on her tears, Caroline watched as they tipped him into the space and started putting the boards back into place with the old nails and a hammer.

It took a little while longer to clean up the blood, leaving the floor much cleaner than it had been originally, but at least it wouldn't alert the first squatter that broke in here.

"I know a girl," Enzo said, as they walked back to the truck in fresh clothes, their old things bundled in a bag to be dropped into a dumpster on the way back to their side of the city. "She can bring your package to Elijah."

"I don't want it to go to Elijah, I want it to go straight to Klaus. I'm not giving this to some middle management asshole." Caroline said, pulling herself into the middle seat this time.

Enzo winced as he got into the driver's seat. "That will take some convincing."

And it had. Enzo's friend was a girl named Rose who paid cash to crash in the basement level of his uncle's building. Unfortunately, she was hiding out from Klaus specifically, after she accidentally helped out someone he'd been hoping to kill, weeks before the Salvatores started ruining lives.

"If I go near him, he's going to kill me!" Rose said while pacing, looking like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. "He killed Trevor for betraying him."

Enzo crossed his arms, leaning against the wall of the small basement while the girls sat on the stairs. "I hear he just wanted to torture you a little by making you run." Caroline would love to know where Enzo's consistently accurate information came from, but he refused to say.

Rose huffed. "I can't run, my Nona's here."

"So bring Klaus something he wants more: proof of the death of the man who murdered his baby brother," Enzo said reasonably. "His little tiff with Katherine was a drop in the bucket compared to this."

Caroline tried not to twitch impatiently as Rose chewed that over. It was still dark but it wouldn't be soon enough. Time was ticking away and she wouldn't put it past that asshole to come knocking early.

"Okay. Okay, that sounds like my best shot." Rose looked around the dingy, unfinished basement and sighed. "I can't stay here forever."

Caroline gave her the card from Elijah, the plastic bag containing Bill's hand with the ostentatious wedding ring from Stephen on it, and a small handwritten note. Taking it with a grimace, Rose looked at Caroline like she might murder Rose as well. "I'll get it to him right away," she promised nervously.

Caroline went back home, and she'd never seen a Mikaelson in person again. Until tonight. Happy Birthday, Caroline.

"I meant to speak with you after I received your package and Elijah had told me what he'd done. Your note has persisted in staying with me all these years: 'XOXO - Caroline, now leave my mother alone.'" Klaus smiled briefly like it was a fond memory. "Nothing for yourself, only for your mother. Such a wondrous power to find the people you would burn the world for."

"I didn't want to speak to any of you. You'd done enough." Folding her arms under her chest, she tilted her head and looked down her nose at him.

Klaus unexpectedly grinned, a boyish thing that for just a moment made her blink. Unleashing that on the unprepared wasn't very fair at all. He rubbed his bottom lip with his thumb, and she hated a little that she looked. Serial murderers shouldn't get to be this handsome.

"Elijah made quite the impression, I see."

She made a face. "He threatened my mom. Uranium makes a better impression than your brother does. Real talk, does he actually have a soul?"

Klaus lifted a shoulder. "He might have several, kept as trophies on his office shelves."

It was so unexpected, that the laugh was out of her before she could pull it in. An odd little expression flickered across his face, there and gone before she could name it.

"No one ever said you were funny," she said grudgingly.

"Truly? I can't imagine why. What else do they say about me?" He dimpled at her, lashes golden tipped as he feathered them over amused blue eyes.

Her patience was being tested tonight, that's for sure. "The boogeyman of Chicago shouldn't fish for compliments, what are you, a Junior at your first Homecoming dance?" She would not allow this man to charm her after he broke into her home, no matter how delectable his dimples were. She wouldn't.

Klaus looked delighted. "Boogeyman? Surely you must know how artists appreciate praise of their work, love." He affected a bashful little smile, and the corner of her mouth twitched inadvertently.

"Right, your little Mikaelson rebranding campaign. Your brother has that YouTube channel with the chicken," she would not say cock in front of him, "and your sister does the um, the fashion influencer thing on Instagram? I think you do, what, blood splatter paintings?" Caroline asked casually like she hadn't totally internet-stalked all three of their social media in morbid fascination when they started going around the internet.

"One would hope my art isn't nearly so literal. Blood is such a temperamental medium after all," he said like this was something they both knew. "Oil is preferred, although I have been known to dabble in acrylics. I do enjoy a modern style, some landscapes. Rarely people."

She'd taken several Art Appreciation classes in college for the credits and found she really enjoyed them. What art she could find of Klaus' online seemed to be a dark abstract expressionism style, aside from a few landscapes that seemed more in line with impressionism. Caroline wondered which he would use with human subjects.

"Is there something wrong with people?" she asked.

He made a considering noise. "Seldom do they catch my attention." Head at a slight tilt, he seemed to be studying her.

"I hear that's bad for one's health," Caroline said, gesturing her finger in a circle as if to encompass the situation they were in.

"It can be, as Tyler will find if he doesn't crawl out of the hole he's stashed himself in." Klaus raised his eyebrows as if expecting an answer.

She shrugged. "Don't know anything. Wouldn't tell you if I did."

"Mm. You have an impressive loyalty that holds even in the face of betrayal."

Grimacing, she remembered Klaus' accusations towards Tyler. "It's not a betrayal that he loves his mom. He's just being—" She cut off. Stupid about it, she wanted to say, he's just being stupid about it. He could have asked Caroline for help, did he think she wouldn't? Instead, he turned to the mob for cash?

"Idiotic?" Klaus filled in the blanks anyway. When she glared at him in annoyance, the corner of his mouth tipped up as if dragged there without his permission.

"I'm having a gallery opening in two weeks at Carraway's," he said unexpectedly, a dart of his tongue wetting his lips. "I would be delighted if you came. My siblings are all occupied that evening."

She blinked. "Come to your gallery opening?" Was he for real?

"Yes. The champagne at least will be excellent, even if the collectors are among the most tediously insufferable people alive."

An incredulous noise escaped her. "Did I just hallucinate the part where you threatened my boyfriend and me? The answer, by the way, is 'No, I did not.'"

A strangely covetous look flashed across his face as he stood there, rubbing his thumb against the fingertips of his hand idly. "What is it you want?"

"I want you to leave Tyler and me alone! Release him from this favor. Surely the money can't be that much, aren't you, like, stupid rich?" Caroline said without hesitation.

"Something like that. But it's not possible, I'm afraid," he said, seeming a little too pleased about it. "I'm presuming Tyler's job necessitates contact with me at some time. I can hardly tell him, 'Apologies, but Caroline forbids it,' as much as I would like that. Equally, I will not release him from his obligation. I have a reputation to maintain, after all."

Rolling her eyes, Caroline huffed. "And me?"

"No." At Caroline's stare, Klaus slid his hands in his pockets and leaned forward into her space. "I propose a trade."

She squinted suspiciously at him. "What kind of trade?" If the phrase 'sexual favors' came out of his mouth, she would deck him.

"Nothing untoward, I assure you." He straightened and smiled like he could read her mind like he was imagining things that would make her squirm. "Just an evening of your time. You come to the gallery opening, stay a couple of hours, and I'll ensure no harm comes to you from this unpleasantness."

"Or Tyler?" She crossed her arms unbudgingly.

"Or Tyler," he said grudgingly.

Tapping one foot on the laminate, she thought about it. "This feels like a trap."

"The trap is that it's a gallery filled with the most pretentious people in Chicago."

"Including you."

He ducked his head to hide his smile, very unsuccessfully. "Including me."

This was probably one of the dumbest decisions of her life, she thought, frowning at him. But she needed to buy some time to find out why Tyler wasn't here, and why the hell he'd lied to her.

"Fine," she said abruptly. "I'll go to your little gallery opening if you give me your word that no harm will come to me or Tyler."

His face went solemn but there was something about his eyes that suggested he was still amused by her. "I give you my word."

"Ugh." She glanced away, shifting on her still aching bare feet. "Now can you please go away? You are interrupting my post-party shower time and I need to hydrate before I'm locked into a hangover from hell. Some of us have normal jobs in the morning and not, like, puppies to kick, or minions to eviscerate in your murder dungeon."

Klaus turned with his hands still in his pockets, walking backwards towards the door, a sly smile on his face. "I don't use my dungeon for murder, love."

"Wow, okay." An unexpected warmth crawled up her face, and Caroline fully blamed the alcohol—that she drank like three hours ago, but who's counting?—for the gloriously filthy image that swept through her mind. The things she bet he could do with those artist's hands. "Weird how I didn't ask."

With a slow, melting smile, he took one of those hands out of his pockets and put it on the doorknob. "No," he said smugly. "But you thought about it. I'll send you an invitation to the opening." With a flash of dimples, he let himself out the door. She could hear his footsteps tap lightly down the stairs, and the soft bang of the front door snapping shut.

Caroline cupped her hands over her face, let out one loud noise of frustration, and then pulled her phone out of her bra. With one hand she opened her texts to Tyler, while she busied herself with getting a bottle of water out of the fridge.

[2:48 AM]

Caroline: So, Klaus Mikaelson just jump-scared me in our living room. Did you forget to tell me something? D:

About five minutes later, as the water was warming up in the shower, her phone started vibrating loudly against her bedside table. Tyler probably. Well, he could just wait while she showered off her evening.

As she tilted her head back in the shower and let the water soak her hair, she tried to collect the little pieces of herself that had been jarred loose by the reappearance of the Mikaelson family in her life. Those memories were some of her worst. And if she had understood Klaus correctly, he hadn't known Elijah's ultimatum to her until after. That didn't mean he wouldn't have endorsed it if he had. But still, irrationally, it made it a little easier to swallow her upcoming… outing? date? enforced socialization with a crime lord.

Scrubbing off the sweat and glitter of the evening, she tried to prepare herself for the upcoming conversation with Tyler. Some little part of her was still hoping Klaus was lying, but the thing was, she knew Tyler, knew he had a preference for taking shortcuts. If he thought this was something he could get away with, he would take the money for his mother.

She understood that, of all people she did. But he had other options before taking money from the mob.

Fifteen minutes later, clad in fresh pajamas and halfway through another bottle of water, Caroline picked up her phone and sat down in bed. Three missed calls from Tyler and a slew of texts.

[2:53 AM]

Tyler: Care are you okay? Did he hurt you? We can press charges

Tyler: Care please pick up

Tyler: I'm in a safehouse across town, they won't let me leave yet, please answer

Tyler: CAROLINE

Caroline: I was in the shower, I'm fine

Halfway through her next text, Tyler called. With a steadying breath, she picked up.

"Hi, Tyler—"

"Are you okay? Did he hurt you? What happened?" he asked in a rush.

Holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder, she took a tube of lotion off her bedside table and started her nightly moisturizing routine. "I'm fine. He didn't even touch me, just talked a lot. And I'm not pressing charges against Klaus Mikaelson for unproven breaking and entering." She rolled her eyes even though he couldn't see it. "His stupid lawyer brother would have him out in thirty seconds and then he'd just be annoyed at me." Despite the fact that they were in a mutually assured destruction standoff, she didn't need someone who knew what really happened to her father peeved at her.

Also who was, you know, probably a sociopath?

"What did he talk about?" Tyler definitely sounded nervous.

"That you owe him a favor for a favor." There was a guilty silence for a moment. "Tyler, seriously, what were you thinking, taking money from the mob for your mom? Why didn't you just ask me for help? I mean, I'm not gonna keep your mom in caviar lunch dates, but we could have saved the house."

"It wasn't your problem!" Tyler said stiffly.

"Not my problem?" Caroline said heatedly. "Tyler, you are my boyfriend, we live together. Have I been giving you the impression that I suddenly don't care about you?"

"No!" he said hastily. "No, just—"

"Then why wouldn't you come to me?" Caroline demanded

"Jesus, Caroline. You just lost your mom a few months ago, I didn't want to heap my mom's problems on you too. She just made some bad decisions with Dad's money, and I figured I could use Klaus' money to keep her afloat and get the rest of it back. I'd have it all back to him in a couple weeks."

Slightly mollified, Caroline huffed. "So how's that going for you?"

"Not… great?" he said like it was dragged out of him.

"'Not great?' Tyler, Klaus Mikaelson the serial murderer with the non-stick record was standing in our living room, I think we are beyond 'not great.' And now I have to go on some kind of weird date with this guy and—"

There was some kind of clatter in the background of the call. "What do you mean, 'date?'"

Carefully, Caroline relayed back a heavily edited version of her conversation with Klaus that she had put together in the shower. She still wasn't ready to tell Tyler about her dad, didn't know if she'd ever be.

She also did not relate his parting comment. Tyler was already having kittens over Klaus' mild flirtations, which surely was just his personality.

At the end, Tyler got really quiet and sat there for a minute. Finally, Caroline couldn't bear the silence.

"Tyler? You wanna share with the class what you're thinking?" she cajoled.

"We can use this," he said, getting excited.

Caroline blinked. "Excuse me?"

"We can use this! Yeah, you'll go to this gallery thing, and you'll wear a wire," he barreled along, unaware he'd ground her heart to a screeching halt. "He's clearly got the hots for you—" voice irritated, "—and you can get him to talk about incriminating stuff."

Yeah, incriminating stuff about herself, probably. No thanks.

"I'm not wearing a wire. Recording people without their consent is still illegal, Tyler."

He scoffed. "I'm sure I can find a judge that will sign off on the warrant."

Putting her face into the palm of her hands, Caroline breathed in frustration. "And then that judge or that judge's aide or someone will tell him, and then I will have an annoyed mob boss and his crazy mob family on my hands. No, thank you. I'll just… tell you if he says anything that sounds like a crime, and you can go investigate it." No, no she would not.

"Where are you by the way?" she threw at him to change the subject. "What was so damn important that you aren't here now, making me feel better?"

"Uh. An informant overheard a guy say Klaus was looking for me. Like, looking for me, looking for me? So HQ packed me off to a safe house. I think they'll let me go in the morning since you got him to back off."

Caroline slammed the lotion tube down on her bedside table. "You texted me this morning, and you didn't think to warn me that some murdery nutjob might show up looking for you?"

"My boss wouldn't let me, active investigation!" Tyler said defensively. "My hands were tied. And see, you were fine."

Of all the— "I was fine because I amused the dragon* you dummy* not because at any point in that conversation I was safe from his teeth. You know what, stay there a few days and think of a good codeword for the next time someone wants to murder you, so I'm prepared."

Ignoring his frantic babble, Caroline disconnected the call. Tossing her phone on the nightstand, she snuggled down in bed with irritated, jerky movements.

Of all the bullshit, she thought, staring at his side of the bed. 'My hands were tied,' my ass.

Unbidden, that slow, dimpled smile of Klaus' popped into her head, suggestive and indecent. He was not in the least bit charming, she told herself sternly. This 'date' was going to be boring and tedious. She would annoy him and he would leave her alone. That was that.

Two weeks later, that was certainly not that.

"Listen, okay?" Tyler sat on the bed while Caroline put the finishing touches on her hair. "You won't wear a wire for whatever reason, but maybe just an earpiece? If you say your codeword, I can come in and get you if he starts acting crazy."

Caroline rolled her eyes at her reflection and slid the curling iron from her last curl. "Tyler, nothing is going to happen. This is a big event, the press will be there. Please stop freaking out."

"I'm not freaking out!" he protested, jiggling his leg on the bed as he watched her come out and start picking through her jewelry box on the dresser. "The man is just a psychopath, and he's going on a date with my girlfriend, who is looking much too pretty tonight."

"Thanks," she said flatly, bending over to look in the mirror propped up on the dresser top. Some dangly little earrings were slipped through her ears and she checked her makeup. Still flawless.

"I'm just saying! You want to be the final girl and not, like, the bikini girl who gets axed in the first twenty minutes, right?"

"Wow, okay. Bonnie's coming over soon and we're going to have a horror night on toxic tropes so you can understand why what you just said is bad and wrong." Grabbing her tiny purse for the night, she slipped her tinted lip balm into it. If she started biting her lips dry out of nerves, that would be annoying

And she was nervous, no doubt about it. Ever since the small envelope had arrived with her invitation and she'd stuck it on the fridge, it had made something roll in her stomach every time she looked at it. This time was no different, as she plucked it from the magnet holding it.

"I'm just worried about you," He said, following her out and leaning against the arch leading back behind him into the hallway to the bedroom. "It would be my fault if anything happened to you; I got you into this mess."

Opening the small closet by the door, Caroline looked at her jackets. Her black trench coat would work the best with her outfit, but would it look too much like a strip tease when she took it off? No, it should be fine. She snagged it out of the closet and pulled it on over her dress, tying the sash with jerky fingers.

"Yeah, you did," she sighed. "But I'm going to get me out of it. I'll be so… me, that he'll realize what a mistake he made." Her phone buzzed—her Uber waiting for her at the curb—and she tucked it into her jacket pocket.

He smiled a shadow of anxiety still on his face. "I'm sure you're gonna do great." He joined her at the door and pressed a kiss to her cheek in his normal avoidance of anything he deemed 'lipstick.' "Now, go be you."

"Right!" Careful in her heels, she let herself out the door and down the stairs to the car.

The twenty-minute drive to Carraway's Galleria passed in an anxious blur. She almost told the driver to go back so she could change her outfit twice, but she was already fashionably late and she didn't want him to think she wasn't coming.

She'd googled it, of course, but the three-story brick building was still a surprise with the warm light pouring out the front windows. The front door was inset in the middle of the building, and she stared for a second while she took a deep breath, and then got out.

"Be you," she muttered to herself as she walked up to the bright red front door and pulled it open. "Be you."

There was a table set up next to the front door, a double coat rack partially filled with coats behind it. The smiling lady behind the table took her invitation while Caroline glanced around the long room. Not really looking for anyone just taking in the layout, she told herself. There were nicely dressed people wandering around looking at the art on the stark white walls, with a few waiters in white coats offering glasses of champagne and small hors d'oeuvres on trays mixing in among them. Their voices made a soft susurration to the background of some kind of upscale elevator music playing over the hidden sound system.

And about halfway down the gallery, there was Klaus. An older couple had him pulled off to the side, and he was waving a hand at the painting behind him, that charming smile on his face. The couple laughed at something he said, and he turned to gesture at the painting to his left when something made him look up. Maybe his murder senses were tingling from being stared at, maybe he was keeping an eye on the door. Whatever it was, his gaze snapped to her like a lodestone. And he stared.

"I can take your coat, Miss Forbes." The reception lady's voice seemed very far away as Caroline's hands dropped to the tie at her waist. Klaus' eyes followed them, and he murmured something to the couple before starting towards her. The sash came undone and with a lift of her chin, she pulled open the trench coat and slid it off her shoulders, revealing the thigh-length silver, sequined dress underneath.

Klaus stopped in his tracks, his lips parting as he regarded her from soft curls, down the sparkling material that clung to her curves, and then lingered down the length of her legs to the peep-toe Louboutins that gave her a few more inches from which to stare him down. She pulled the coat off the long sleeves of her dress and handed it to the receptionist with a soft thanks.

Next to his side, Klaus' fingers stretched and then relaxed, and he ran his tongue across his lower lip like he was contemplating something. Whatever it was, he tucked it away behind his eyes but left the open admiration on his face as he started towards her again.

Annoyingly, he made such a good picture as he did it, his dark suit fitted perfectly, the collar of his black shirt undone just a button too low. His shoes probably cost just as much as hers, she thought grudgingly. His hair was starting to curl on the top of his head, and inanely she wondered if he could be talked into letting it continue. Not that she would.

Somehow she put one foot in front of the other to meet him halfway.

"Good evening," he said like he couldn't quite believe she came. Caroline stared at him a second, weirdly at a loss for words herself, before glancing away from his oh-so-focused gaze.

"I need a drink." She brushed past him and hoped it was just her imagination that she could feel his admiration like a touch down the open back of her dress.

It was easier, farther away from him, and she accepted a glass from a waiter gratefully. The champagne was good, she thought, slightly annoyed about it as she was inclined to be at the moment. With nothing but her mandated 'few' hours—she was interpreting that as 'two'—to kill, she joined the slowly circulating throng of people looking at the art hung on the walls.

By the third painting, she was seeing a pattern. As she frowned at the painting, champagne glass held thoughtfully to her lips, she felt that prickle up her spine that she was starting to associate with Klaus.

"Are you stalking me?" she murmured, and a warmth brushed her arm as he leaned closer to her ear.

"What do you think?" He lifted his chin in a gesture toward the painting they were in front of.

"I think you're stalking me." She took a sip of champagne, trying not to lift her lips at his little noise of amusement.

"Of the painting," he said expectantly.

For a moment, Caroline considered trying tact, trying deflection, trying anything than what popped into her mind. But… be yourself.

"I hate it." To the right of her, Caroline could see a woman in what was probably couture turn and stare at Caroline, before hustling further down the line. She guessed he probably wouldn't kill her right there, but blood splatter on Gucci wasn't likely to come out. Smart of her.

A soft noise made her turn her head, peeking at him out of the corner of her eye, and she nearly dropped her glass. The crazy man looked delighted, and she leaned to the side to get a better look at his face, incredulous.

"Tell me what you hate about it," he said softly, mirth coloring his tone. With the back of one finger, he brushed the back of her hand and a shiver crawled up her arm.

Caroline turned back to face the painting in front of her and cleared her throat. Well, he asked. "Like, okay, are you allergic to color? Seriously, does it burn your eyes like some CMYK-challenged vampire?" Pointing from the beginning of the line to the end, she waved her hand in a circle. "Notice anything?"

Klaus looked from each painting to the next, all a monochrome abstract art in dark colors. "One would call that a theme perhaps, or a series?" he argued with a smile.

When Caroline shot him a flat look, it only made his smile wider. "It's boring." When he opened his mouth with a rebuttal, Caroline held up a finger. "Monochrome is a totally valid form of expression and allows the artist to challenge themselves with the use of a limited palette. This one," she jabbed a finger at the painting in front of her, "Is not challenging anything. These are very brown greys, depression looks like this painting." A thought occurred to her. "Oh, were you depressed when you painted it?"

For a moment, Klaus looked like he was struggling with wonder and confusion. "No, I was… bored."

"Okay well, it shows. I am also bored." She crossed her arms and gestured with her glass. "You have one piece in the Museum of Contemporary Art, and it has a vibrancy to it that all these lack. Maybe you're in an artistic slump, it happens. I picked the same font for like, three events in a row. You just need to dig up whatever it was that fueled that and do it some more. But you are so so capable of better."

He absently rubbed his tongue against his lower lip. "So." The corner of his mouth curved up, a dimple peeking at her, and Caroline blinked. "You have seen my work before."

Glancing away, her cheeks a little warm, she scowled. "It's in the gallery, there are a lot of paintings in the gallery."

"But you noticed it. You remember it." A smug look was settling on his face.

"Ugh. I remember that 'White on White' travesty too." She wrinkled her nose.

He tilted his head to watch her. "'White on White' was hailed as a futuristic masterpiece in its day, a transcendence of flight exemplified by airplanes and the backing of clouds." A waiter walked by and Klaus snagged a glass off his tray.

"Listen." She pointed her finger at him. "I'm not saying it's not art. I'm saying it's boring art. At least Klein had the decency to invent a new shade of blue when he was like, 'I'm going to paint a rectangle.'"

People had been walking around them while they faced off in front of the questionable painting, most of them eyeballing the two of them like a tennis match, but a man standing off to the side looked like he actually wanted to look at the depression painting. Without thinking, Caroline grabbed Klaus' arm and towed him to the other side of the room in front of a clear painting.

"Oh good," she said in a monotone. "This one's purple." A very dark, flat sort of purple, but purple nonetheless.

"I don't remember painting this one," Klaus admitted. "Perhaps we had eggplant for dinner?" He studied it with a frown.

"Oh my god." Caroline went to take a deep drink of her flute and realized it was empty. A glance around assured her there were no nearby waiters, and she sighed. With careful fingers, she reached out and plucked the glass from Klaus' hand. "Believe me, I need this more than you."

A laugh rumbled out of his chest as he let her take it. "By all means." He watched her tip the champagne back, and she tried to ignore the soft caress of his gaze on her throat.

"It's a shame that I must disappoint you regarding your comment that I dig up my inspiration once again," Klaus said with a small smile on his face. Caroline hummed a confused note. "There's about a ton of concrete above him, you see."

Caroline choked, managed to swallow, and coughed, trying not to laugh. No one was close enough to hear his soft comment, but still, parabolic microphones existed.

"I could be wearing a wire, for all you know," she grumbled. It was almost a surprise to find that she very much didn't want this weird serial killer with his bad paintings and delightful dimples caught by her too-eager boyfriend.

"You're not," he said simply.

"And how would you know?" She arched her eyebrows at him.

A slow smile curved his lips, the heat in his eyes a smoldering fire that made her clench low in her belly. "Believe me, I'm looking."

With a disbelieving noise, Caroline stared at him and then looked away, ignoring the crawling heat up her cheeks. With an abrupt turn, she started towards the stairs at the back of the room.

"Something I said, love?" Laughter filled Klaus' voice as he followed her.

"You're not supposed to say things like that," she hissed. Passing a waiter, she dropped the two empty glasses off on his tray. The stairs were a switchback that led to the next floor, and Caroline started up them.

"Not tell you how ravishing you look in that dress?" He sounded incredulous.

She stopped with one foot on the first landing and looked behind her. His eyes flicking up from where they had been focused on her ass, Klaus didn't look even the slightest bit repentant at having been caught.

"I am… spoken for if you recall?" she said heatedly.

His gaze lost none of its focused heat, but his voice turned serious. "Tyler is clearly a fool and a stupid one at that."

She bristled. "Just because he borrowed some stupid money from you, doesn't make him—"

"Any boy that would send you into my arms looking as breathtaking as you do to save his own skin is both a fool and a coward." He put his foot on the step she stood on and leveraged himself up to an equal height with her, only a breath between them.

"I'm not in your arms," she reminded him, something shivering like wildfire under her skin.

He smiled, something anticipatory in the corner of his lips. "You're not in Tyler's either, and that is not a mistake I'd ever make."

Hand clenched on the handrail to keep from decking him, Caroline remembered Tyler's words as she got ready—"Looking much too pretty tonight…"—and the tepid kiss on the cheek she'd gotten in goodbye. There was nothing tepid in the way Klaus was looking at her, waiting.

She let out a noise of pure frustration, and whirled around, storming up the stairs. A rough little sound escaped him as he slowly followed behind her, and she hoped he choked on the vision of her ass in this dress.

The second floor was the same as the first, a long, narrow room with white walls, with paintings spaced every few feet, except for the other end of the room which was all windows that looked out on the street. There seemed to be fewer people on this floor, and Caroline started arbitrarily on one side since there didn't seem to be any particular flow of traffic.

For several paintings, she was alone, no shadow at her elbow. She started to relax. Maybe he had more important people to talk to, people actually here to buy his paintings and not just some girl here to settle a debt that did nothing but insult his art. Annoyingly, her plan didn't seem to be working, judging by his heated looks. He didn't seem to be the kind of man that didn't care what came out of her mouth as long as she looked beautiful, quite the opposite. He seemed to be enjoying a great deal of what she had to say.

A waiter's tray covered in little paper wrappers with small finger foods perched in them appeared in front of her. Caroline followed the blazer-covered arm supporting it up to Klaus' face. She wouldn't call the look on his face 'earnest,' that was a little too wholesome a word for the fervent look that still lingered in his eyes. But the desire that had crashed against her emotional breakwaters seemed to be at least moderately tucked away.

"Is this a peace offering?" she asked, her voice grumpy. He really shouldn't look so amused at that, it made her want to bite him and she was sure he'd enjoy that, the weirdo. The thought of her teeth marking those slimly muscled shoulders lingered a little too long in her thoughts and she internally scolded herself.

"If you'd like." With his other hand, he pointed at one-quarter of the tray, going around it in a clockwise motion. "The crab puffs are excellent, and the spinach quiches also. I'm unaware of the identity of the little crispy things with the foam on top, I'd advise trying at your own risk. The crumb-topped mushrooms are stuffed with brie." And still, he waited, holding the small tray.

Narrowing her eyes at Klaus, she took one of the crab puffs with extreme suspicion and popped it into her mouth. Chewed. And found herself struggling not to make a delighted sound. It was even better than The Drake's recipe, and she tried not to scarf those every time they served them at one of her events.

"Yeah okay, those are pretty good," she admitted grudgingly. Klaus looked a little too pleased with himself. "Let's see how the rest measure up. I have very high standards for finger foods, you know."

Klaus picked one of the mushrooms off the tray and ate it. "I imagine so, being employed at The Drake Hotel."

This time, Caroline selected a quiche and took a bite. "So you finally did some homework on me," she said, voice bland.

Looking momentarily irritated, Klaus studied the tray. "I require detail-oriented minions. When they become lazy and miss details, they become less necessary."

Rest in pieces to that guy, Caroline thought, deciding to try the unknown hors d'oeuvres. It was an oddly crumbly pile and she ended up picking the wrapper up and tipping it into her mouth. The best that could be said of it was that it had a great crunchy texture. Unfortunately, it didn't have much flavor.

"I'm not supposed to call the interns 'minions' anymore, apparently it's bad for morale." Caroline made a face and nudged him down the row of paintings.

"I can't imagine my minions daring to express such an opinion," Klaus said mildly as they walked slowly.

Trying the mushrooms, Caroline hummed in amusement. "Stabbing the employees is also frowned upon by HR."

"Have they tried it?" he asked while snacking off the tray. "We've never had a hiring problem, and there's something to be said for the urgency in our employees' learning curve."

Caroline snorted out a laugh, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth. Klaus looked pleased with himself, dimples a tease with that cheeky smile. Ugh, any more of this, and she was going to start thinking he was likable.

"Okay so, take these landscapes." She stopped at a corner of the room, gestured at the couple of paintings behind them, and the one in front of them, all of which—obnoxiously—had sold tickets on them. "I mean, sure, you're up to duotone, that's a step in the right direction, I guess. You're still doing that thing where the majority of the color wheel gives you hives." She patted the arm he was still holding the tray with. "It's okay, most men are Technicolor challenged. I'm still trying to convince Tyler that navy blue is not as daring and bold as he thinks it is."

"I resent being compared to that puppy," Klaus said, disgruntled.

"Seriously, if you own a shirt that is not gray, white, or black, please tell me. I will wait." Caroline crossed her arms, doing just that. She could practically see the contents of his probably ridiculously big walk-in closet scroll by in his eyes.

"I have a few green shirts—" he protested.

"Dark green?"

"—And some burgundy."

"Truly, a credit to your gender," she said dryly. He shot her his first look of actual irritation all night. "I'm not saying you have to go out and buy a pink button-up, just would it literally kill you to use something besides a shade in any of these paintings? Dark paintings aren't bad, but you've gotta admit that putting them all together like this is kind of… monotonous. I mean, unless you're going for—" she affected a deep broody voice, "—'My dark artist's soul is tortured and bleak.' To be fair, that would probably make you the most money."

Klaus laughed, a delighted little sound in the quiet of the floor. A few people turned to look at them and Caroline glanced away a little nervously.

"I don't believe I've ever been so insulted in my entire life by someone who is aware of…" He gestured his finger in a circle in the air as if to encompass his criminal empire and the ruthless enforcement of it as a whole.

"So you probably don't want me to stick around. I'll just get going," she said with a too-big smile, taking a step towards the stairs. Caroline needed to get out of here before she either started thinking he was charming or she knocked him down the stairs for looking at her the way he did and making her… feel things.

"Just a moment, love. You haven't even seen the third floor." Klaus' face said he knew what she was trying to do and, though amusing, he wasn't buying it. He made a small motion to offer her something else off the tray and she sighed and took a crab puff, then made a small 'no more' gesture.

"Please tell me you've got something different up there, or I really am leaving." She popped the little fried ball in her mouth.

Waving down a waiter, Klaus handed the tray to him, and the waiter quickly made himself scarce. "Oh," Klaus said, "I think you'll be surprised." He slid his hands into his pants pockets as they strolled towards the stairs.

"Do not tell me you have tasteful nudes up there." Caroline sucked her thumb and forefingers clean since there didn't seem to be any napkins anywhere. Sliding a bland look his way, she found him instead watching her again with that heated look in his eyes. She narrowed her eyes at Klaus, and he just smiled back at her unabashedly.

"No, no nudes." There was something odd about his light tone of voice that she couldn't interpret.

Still, she looked at him suspiciously. "Okay, but there better be something up there I like or I'm reserving the right to leave."

"And what a disappointment that would be. I assure you, this is the most fun I've had at one of these." The stairs were clear for the moment, and they started up them.

"I don't know why," she said, watching her heels on the stairs carefully. "I'm just… being me." And annoyingly, she found, for the most part, she was having fun too.

Klaus hummed softly. "I happen to like that about you, very much." When she shot him an incredulous look, he laughed softly. "The majority of people are ruled by fear, I've found. Fear of me, fear of themselves. You are not."

She huffed. "Listen, if I'm going to die, it's going to be because of something I said, not because Tyler dragged a dire evil to our doorstep and didn't even have the grace to be home." Tyler had taken her seriously and waited two days to come home, but she still wasn't over his lack of warning. Shouldn't 'life of the girlfriend who I love' trump 'professional scruples?'

Still, she showed up tonight because she wasn't going to leave him to face whatever punishment Klaus wanted to dole out just because she was mad at him.

At the top of the stairs, they paused when he gently set two fingers on her arm. Glancing down at them and then back up at his face, she bit her lip nervously at his warm smile.

"I like that about you."

"... But?"

"No buts."

They stood staring at each other, the moment stretching on, broken only by the delicate clearing of a throat. Caroline looked away first, finding a trio of women, waiting expectantly to go down the stairs.

Next to her, Klaus bristled as he looked at them, seemingly annoyed with the interruption. Quickly, Caroline looped her arm through his and pulled them out of the way. "Sorry, ladies," she tossed behind her. Turning back to Klaus, who had come suspiciously obediently, she asked, "How is most of Chicago still alive with your temper?"

"The majority of people don't annoy me quite so directly," he groused as they walked towards the small amount of art displayed on the walls on the final floor. A photographer was taking pictures of the art and glanced up as they walked toward her. Her face lit up in delight.

"How wonderful for them." Caroline went to pull her arm from Klaus', only to be halted by his arm squeezing hers to his side.

"Don't cause a scene," he whispered when she tugged on his arm. The photographer was coming towards them quickly.

"I'll show you a scene," Caroline muttered, then pasted a smile on her face.

"Klaus Mikaelson," the brunette reporter met them, offering Klaus her hand. "Your openings are, as always, a delight."

"Andie, thank you for coming." He shook her hand and then gestured to Caroline. "Andie Star, of the Chicago Sun-Times, this is Caroline Forbes, an old friend."

"A pleasure," Caroline said, going to offer her hand but still being stopped by Klaus' casual-looking but firm grip on her arm. "I'd shake your hand but…"

Andie laughed like she was being funny. "Nope, he doesn't seem to want to let go." Dimples flashing in a mischievous grin, Klaus patted Caroline's trapped hand. She dug her nails into his arm in retaliation.

"Can I get a picture of you two next to some of your collection?" Andie asked, gesturing with the camera.

"I would love nothing more," Klaus practically purred, towing Caroline towards the one wall with pictures. She didn't get a good look at them before he was turning them around to face Andie, who was fiddling with her camera.

Keeping her pageant smile frozen on her face, Caroline said quietly, "I will make you regret this."

"Never," he murmured back, and then Andie was telling them to look at the camera and she was snapping photos

"Thanks so much," Andie grinned. "I should have time to have this written up before morning. Mr. Mikaelson, my editor will email you about the finished article." She waved at them and then hurried off downstairs.

"That wasn't so hard, was it?" Klaus asked, smug, and Caroline gave in to impulse and kicked him in the ankle. A small grunt of pain was his only reaction, and still, he kept a close hold on her arm.

"Fine, now show me your dumb paintings so I can leave," she ground out.

"But only if you don't like them," he reminded her, turning them to face the first piece, a painting.

She shot him a dirty look before turning. "Your track record thus far has been… oh." Without thinking, she took a step towards it, and this time, Klaus let her go. She studied the painting and its lovely little explosions of color, bright teals, dabs of yellow, hidden blues, and a flash of red. It drew the eye to it, dynamic and almost floral in its brushstrokes, seeming lit from within.

It was not in the least bit boring.

[Modern painting with colors swirled together. Lots of blues and teals and greens with some pops of red and dashes of yellow.]

"You painted this?" she asked, checking for confirmation.

His face, when she looked back, was rather bashfully pleased. "I did, recently."

"Well," she cleared her throat, "When I said you could do better, clearly I was right." Gave him a look and then went back to studying the painting. "I guess these colors are acceptable. You know, I have a dress with almost this exact combo of teals and blues; it's one of my favorites. Oh, well, you saw it." She waved her hand absently.

Klaus shifted slightly. "Yes."

There was something in the tone of his voice that made her turn around and look at him. And then she blinked. "Hold on. How recently?"

It was his turn to clear his throat. "Approximately two weeks ago."

Caroline felt bewildered, looking back at the painting. "But Klaus, this is…" Amazing. She wanted to say amazing.

The pleasure that curled that smile. "My harshest critic is pleased, what an unexpected turn of events." Leaning into her slightly, he murmured, "I guess you'll be staying after all."

Her glare was half-hearted at best. "We'll see, just explain…" She waved her hand at the painting.

"It was my favorite of the lot," he said with a small shrug.

"The lot?" Caroline asked, even more confused. What had possessed him to paint several of these?

"I can't get the, ah," here he made a cage from his fingers and tapped his fingertips against his sternum, "The light correct."

"Light?" she echoed again, dazedly. What was he talking about? It practically looked like it was aglow.

Klaus' smile couldn't possibly get more pleased. "You're extremely determined, all that focus. The sun at noon is less illuminating." There was something so sincere in his eyes that made her clench her fist at her side, nails digging into her palms.

Caroline hated it, but she looked away first. This vicious and petty monster with his red, red hands looking at her like that with his want bared for her to see. What had she done to deserve the next thing to the devil's dimples and charm? She had tried to be herself, the girl that was called 'abrasive' on a good day and 'bitch' on the bad, and what did this confusing man do but be delighted. Klaus was known for his temper, and she wondered if this was a game. That feeling that had swooped in her stomach cracked.

"Stop it," she said low. "Stop doing this."

His eyebrows twitched down in confusion. "I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific. Stop what?"

She turned to face him, feeling welling up inside her as she glared at him. "This flirty, charming thing you're doing, with your dimples and your paintings. I'm with Tyler, and I'm only here because you extorted me into it. Maybe some other girl would fall for it, but I'm much too smart to be seduced by you."

There was a stiffness to his posture as he stood there, one hand the thumb rubbing against his fingertips. "I have no need of pretenses, Caroline Forbes. Tyler matters very little to me, in this and other pursuits."

"Then why am I here? If Tyler didn't matter, then why make me come here and show me this—" Caroline flung her arm at the beautiful painting, that she hated that she loved. "—and act so… so…" Struggled for words to describe the romance novel levels of charm this man had. She couldn't tell him that, god, how mortifying.

"As honest as you have been with me, I assure you, I have been with you," Klaus said softly, a hint of temper in his words.

"Then why are you doing this?"

"I fancy you. Isn't it obvious?" For all that he said the words quietly in the oddly empty room, they still seemed to ring in her ears.

She stared at him a moment. "I've done nothing but be annoying all night."

The smile crept back into the corners of his lips faintly. "I can't pretend to know what you mean, I'm afraid I've been enjoying your presence all evening."

"All I've been doing is… being myself." Hadn't that been her mantra for the night: Be Yourself. And she had! She hadn't censored herself or held back in the slightest.

"Well, I like that about you. You, who saved your mother at great personal cost. You, who stood barefoot in your living room and stared me down for threatening what was yours. You, who came here tonight, despite betrayal."

"It wasn't betrayal," she snapped, "He was just—"

"Hiding, like a coward." Klaus finished, and she seethed, knowing he was right but refusing to admit it. "I'm aware of the rock Tyler crawled beneath to avoid me, and the warning he neglected to share with you. Such loyalty to the undeserving."

Caroline shifted uncomfortably, trying not to cross her arms defensively. "Yeah well, he had it first."

Klaus' mouth tipped up at the corner, a somewhat sardonic lilt. "I find I desire to have it last."

Her lips parted in confusion, in shock. "You barely know me! We've had a total of two conversations, how could you possibly come to that kind of conclusion?"

"Two weeks, sweetheart," Klaus said, stepping closer to her and completely unselfconsciously looking up the couple inches her heels provided her into her eyes. "I have had two weeks to dig into the marrow of who you've been, and all I have needed to observe the type of person you are have been two nights of your sincere outrage and unbending devotion." He licked his lips, a dart of pink. "Only a fool would not want you for themselves, and Caroline? I have rarely been foolish."

Caroline glanced away for a moment, gathering herself, heart a thundering beat in her ears. The painting caught her eye, and something yearned, some twisted part of her loved that she had inspired something so beautiful. Something craved that she had been enjoying herself so much tonight, that her antagonism was met with delight and needling in kind. Something just… wanted.

And then she pushed it down. She was not here to have moments with this man, she was here for one reason.

"I'm here for Tyler," she said softly. "That's all." Tyler and she would work out their problems. Every couple had rough patches. They just needed to work on their communication.

Something flicked over Klaus' face, some realization, gone in seconds. "For his sake and yours, I hope Tyler is there for you. Such faithfulness should be rewarded in kind."

Fingers worrying a sequin on her dress, Caroline cleared her throat. "Of course."

A burst of laughter came from the stairs, and a moment later, two women arm in arm topped the stairs, animatedly chatting. Whatever moment this was, awkward and huge, it crumbled and left Caroline with an odd feeling of loss.

"Well, should we see the rest of the collection?" Stepping to the side, Klaus held out his arm to have her go first and then paused. "Unless… you still planned on leaving?"

She blew out a breath. "You can't go on about how weirdly honest you think I am and then expect me to go back on my word, can you?" Her voice was grumpy, and she didn't try to hide it in the least as she walked with him to the next exhibit, a large, sepia piece of sketch paper with pencil sketches on it.

"I take nothing for granted when it comes to you, love; you do like to surprise me."

"You're lucky these are my favorite shoes," Caroline said under her breath. Studying the drawings, she felt her own surge of surprise. The page was covered in small studies of the members of his family, done in pencil with white pencil shading. None of them were finished, but they were all beautiful.

"You said you rarely draw people." She glanced at him and found him watching her.

"Ah, I rarely paint people. I like to sketch people. It's…" he hesitated, and then seemed to make up his mind, "Soothing. Helps me focus. I do a lot of planning when I sketch."

"Plotting?" Shot him a knowing look, and he tipped his head back and forth like 'Some of this and some of that' with an impish smile.

"I've never presented my sketches before," Klaus added, offhandedly.

"No? I'm sure they'd do well." Caroline squinted at a small card on the wall that had been next to all the paintings, an information blurb and a price on it. These very clearly said 'Not For Sale.' When she walked to the next piece—a landscape of the Chicago skyline—that card said the same.

"You're not selling them?" This was a much better version of one of the paintings downstairs, done in a blocky, impressionistic style. She moved to the next group of drawings and stopped.

"They're rather… personal." His voice was soft as they looked at a collection of sketches: hands, a woman from the back in jeans and a t-shirt with a suggestion of a profile, a pair of feet, a lone high heel. She did a double take. That was absolutely the shoe she'd flung at Klaus. Looking back at the feet, she could see the edge of a star on one foot. The hands, a suggestion of a bird on the wrist.

Oh my god, this went beyond fancy, this was in full-blown crush territory. The most infamously untouchable mob boss Chicago had seen in decades with probably dozens of people's deaths on his hands, was walking around carrying a torch for her. What had he seen during his little stalker fact-finding mission that would make this man start to crush on her? Perhaps it wasn't what he found, but what he already knew.

Caroline squeezed her hand in a fist and pushed away the haunting feeling of blood that had coated her hands. Maybe they weren't so different. Klaus had started a war over the death of one of his family. Caroline had done the unthinkable to save hers in what way she could. The only difference was in scale.

It was an oddly complimentary feeling, that he saw something in her that could match him. Something strong and capable.

She couldn't find it in herself to tease him about his feelings. His stalking, however…

Pointing at the actual figure, Caroline glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. "So I see you found my Instagram." It was clearly one of the pictures from a beach trip she and Bonnie had taken this summer. Still reeling from her mother's death in February, Bonnie had wanted her to get out and remember that she was still allowed to be happy. The photos had been bittersweet, and she'd cried at least three times over the trip, but eventually, the sun had peeked out in her soul.

[An Instagram post by Caroline Forbes. The picture is Caroline smiling while seated on a beach with her legs out in front of her, leaning her head on her crossed arms. She is wearing blue jeans and a white tshirt and she has a soft smile on her face. The caption of the post says The sun still comes out. The post is liked by Bonnie and 36 other people. It was posted a few months ago in summer.]

"Rebekah keeps telling me to use it, I just wasn't aware there were actually benefits." He seemed to hesitate a moment. "You seemed very melancholy on these."

"My mom died this year, it's been… hard." Her voice stayed even this time, she was getting better at faking that.

"My condolences," he said, voice warm, "I hear the death of a parent can be difficult."

She looked at him in curiosity as they moved to the next drawing. "Your parents are still alive, then?" Caroline couldn't remember ever hearing anything about their parents. Despite them being clearly from Europe, they hadn't appeared to move with them.

"No," Klaus said, "It just wasn't difficult." Caroline wasn't aware you could actually hear the knife emoji in someone's voice, but she certainly could now. Klaus would probably be horribly disgruntled with that observation. He didn't seem the type to use emojis.

Staring at a series of drawings of what looked like Kol Mikaelson cooking in an apron, she worked herself up to her next statement. "I'm sorry about Henrik. It probably doesn't mean much considering what my dad…" she swallowed, trailing off.

It took him a moment to respond. "No, it… thank you." There was an air of finality to his words, a door being firmly shut, and Caroline quickly moved on.

"So how often does Kol light himself on fire for his videos?" she asked, pointing at the final picture, in which he was looking a little singed, sans eyebrows.

"Often enough," Klaus said, a world of fraternal annoyance in his tone.

In this vein, they finished looking at the rest of the drawings. There were no more art surprises, and as they left the top floor, Caroline cast one last look back at the bright painting before heading downstairs.

"Well, now you've seen everything," Klaus said as they stepped down to the first floor. "I don't suppose I could convince you to stay through the arse kissing I've been avoiding all evening?"

"If it's past 9, no." Caroline went to check her phone and then remembered she'd left it and her small purse in the pocket of her trench coat.

He checked the time on an expensive-looking wristwatch—the actual watch kind and not a smartwatch—and made a disappointed noise. "9:02, I'm afraid."

"Then you are out of luck." They started to make their way through the crowd to the reception desk. "I have a wedding reception tomorrow morning and while it's not necessarily my job to keep the wedding planner from killing the bride, my boss offered me a bonus if things go off without a hitch. And believe me, I will get that bonus." Also, she needed to get out of here before he actually charmed her into liking him.

It was almost annoying how much it looked like he was enjoying himself. "I never had a doubt."

"Good." Caroline turned to the receptionist, who was watching them with big eyes. "I need to get my coat. I don't think you gave me a ticket, though?"

"No, Miss Forbes, that's not necessary." She practically scurried to the coat racks and found the coat in question, brought it back to her.

"Good memory," Caroline complimented as she pulled on her trench coat.

"Of course," the receptionist gushed. "Only the best for our VIP ticket holders—"

"Dana." Klaus' voice was fairly neutral but the receptionist clammed up immediately, looking spooked, and turned to busy herself with paperwork, pretending she wasn't listening.

Caroline shot him an unimpressed look as she tied the sash closed. "Uh-huh." Her phone was buzzing in her pocket and she pulled it out. The Uber she'd scheduled was here, and she had fourteen missed calls from Tyler. "Seriously, what did you do now?" She squinted at Klaus, who shrugged both shoulders and slid his hands into his pockets.

"Nothing that broke the terms of our agreement. Tyler is probably a little worked up over the seizure of our missing funds."

"Oh my god, his mom." Caroline put a hand to her forehead, willing herself patience. "You don't understand, he's going to go berserk. He's very…" She struggled for a moment.

Klaus leaned in slightly. "I believe the term is 'Momma's Boy,'" he said with some amusement.

Caroline shoved her phone in her pocket after confirming her Uber, which she could see waiting outside at the curb. "If I don't get my bonus because I was up all night trying to calm down my neurotic boyfriend, I'm billing you for lost wages."

"Acceptable. If you change your mind and I can assist you by taking him off your hands, do let me know." He dimpled at her as she glared at him, her hand on the door handle. "I'd be pleased to give you my mobile numbe—"

"No, thank you. And since I'm sure you have it, lose my number unless I give it to you. Boundaries, Klaus."

He nodded, pressing his lips together, probably to keep from smiling, the jerk. "Allow me to walk you to the car?"

Pick your battles, Caroline. "Fine." She pushed out the door and he followed her out to the Uber. Moving ahead of her, he caught the door handle and opened the door, but not enough for her to slide in. She looked up at him questioningly.

"Did you have a good time, sweetheart?" he asked, smile fully acknowledging that he was keeping the door hostage.

She huffed, steam curling in the cold air, and rolled her eyes as she tried to find something she could say that wouldn't mortify herself or encourage him. Because the truth was she had had fun. It wasn't an easy time, it was challenging and he pushed her buttons, and he seemed to enjoy her pushing his. It was the most annoying feeling that had been creeping up on her all night, that she liked this man and his bad paintings and his secretly good sketches.

"It wasn't… the worst night I've ever had on a—" date, "—an outing to a gallery show. I'm not actually covered in the art this time." Now that had been the worst date ever. Her date hadn't warned her that it was performance art and her new dress had been ruined by strawberry jam.

Klaus tilted his head, a question forming on his lips, and then he seemed to think better of it. That slightly too-focused look was still in his eyes, and Caroline was not going to enlighten him. Whatever he was imagining was bad enough and that way lay dragons.

"Did you have a nice time?" her mouth blurted, quite without her permission. Hopefully, the red crawling up her cheeks could be attributed to the cold.

"Caroline, leaving me to these tedious people alone is going to be a torment compared to the constant delight your presence has been. I've had a wonderful time." This sweeping statement was accompanied by the full wattage of his dimples and damn it, now she really was going to be thinking about this moment for the next month, wasn't she?

"Well," she covered, tossing her curls over her shoulder, "Of course you did. I am scintillating company. In fact—"

"Hey, are you getting in?" The Uber driver had rolled down his window. "I don't have all night."

Klaus turned to look down at him, expression cold, and whatever the driver read in his eyes, he stammered, "Take your time," and rolled the window back up.

"Ugh, I should get back home," Caroline said as Klaus turned back to look at her. "See whatever catastrophe you've created for me this time."

"Of course, love." He opened the door for her the rest of the way, and she carefully slid in. He bent down slightly to look at her. "Your reception will be faultless, I'm sure."

"Thanks. Good night, Klaus."

"Good night, Caroline." He shut the door and patted the top of the car. She put her seatbelt on as the Uber quickly pulled away, the driver glancing in the rearview mirror.

"Who was that guy?" he asked as Caroline tapped her phone to check her texts. Tyler had just left a string of 'Please call me back!'s there so that was no help.

"Klaus Mikaelson," she responded absently.

"Mikaelson?" In the mirror, his eyes were freaked. "Like one of the Family, Mikaelson?"

"Like 'stabs people for fun' Mikaelson." She wasn't above making sure her Uber driver wasn't going to be a creep. "Excuse me, I have to make a call."

Caroline rang Tyler's number until it flipped over to voicemail and then hung up. He never checked his voicemail. She decided to try texting him.

[9:12 PM]

Caroline: Tyler what is going on?

Tyler: On phone with the accountant. coming home?

Caroline: Yes on my way

Tyler: k

Caroline: ?

He didn't respond, and Caroline waited in a tense silence until the car pulled up in front of her apartment. She settled the bill with a small tip for the guy's trouble and got out. The car practically peeled out as it drove away, but Caroline was too worried to deal with it.

"Tyler, is everything okay?" She called as she came through the door. "Tyler?" Stepping into the living room she looked around. It didn't take long for her boyfriend to come storming down the hallways from the bedroom.

"That fucking shit," he seethed. "I thought you had a deal!" He was rumpled in his shirt sleeves but otherwise unharmed. It was odd to discover that she really had expected him to be fine when Klaus said he would be.

"We did have a deal." She took off her coat and hung it up in the closet. "One outing in exchange for neither of us to be harmed. You don't look harmed to me."

"My mom was harmed." Tyler paced back and forth in the kitchen. Caroline paused in pulling her earrings out.

"Is she okay or…?"

"No, Caroline, he took all the money! The bank has no record of the house payments, they're going to foreclose on Monday. Mom's banked at that credit union for decades, and now they just mysteriously are missing any record of the money I deposited."

She digested that for a moment. "Okay, well, at least you won't have to pay taxes on it."

He turned to glare at her. "This is serious, Caroline."

"So are taxes!" She defended. "I can't imagine what you'd have to pay on the amounts you probably borrowed from Klaus. Now it doesn't exist!" Not that Klaus probably didn't have the records and could make them appear at will. He wasn't stupid, not by a long shot.

"My mom's gonna lose the house," he protested.

"Tyler…" She sighed and pulled out a chair from the dinette set, sat down. Tugged her heels off and tried not to wonder if Klaus would be drawing them when he went home tonight. "Does she really need that big house? It's just her rattling around in there. Your mom will be fine, she just has to shop at Ross like the rest of us."

"That money would have fixed everything. He doesn't fucking need it."

Starting to feel frustrated, Caroline said, "It wasn't your money."

Tyler stopped in the middle of his pacing. "It wasn't his either. He stole it or made it illegally. All I have to do is catch him, and then I'll show him. He'll get what he deserves." He was starting to look alarmingly manic.

"Great," she said flatly, standing up and grabbing her shoes. "You live your Eliot Ness best life. Meanwhile, I have an early day tomorrow so I'm going to bed."

"Wait!" Tyler stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, and she had a moment where she hoped he would say… something, anything that would feel like she wasn't losing him. Instead, he said, "Did he say anything tonight, anything I could use?"

Pushing back her disappointment, Caroline shook her head. "No, we talked about art," she lied. "That's all."

With a grunt, Tyler let her go. "Was any of it any good?" His tone indicated he didn't think it would be.

The colorful painting flashed in her head once more, and she smiled a little, unconsciously. "Some of it."

He looked at her almost suspiciously. "Did you have a good time?"

"Eh," she dissembled. "Food was good, at least. You coming to bed?"

"Nah, I'm going to look over some case files." He gave her a quick peck. "I think there's an in I can use…"

"Okay," she said softly as he headed back to the living room and his work bag, "Night."

Sleep didn't come easy, moments from that night replaying on a loop. Again and again, she told herself to stop obsessing over them. Over him.

The diamonds appeared the next day, waiting for her in a nondescript velvet blue box on her dresser when she got home, like a) that wasn't totally creepy that he could get into her house any time, stalker, and b) she couldn't figure out this was fucking Tiffany's by the engraving near the clasp?

It was oh so tempting, the thought of flinging herself into his Instagram DMs and telling him how presumptuous his gift was. Did he think she was buyable? Like a minion, like a lackey?

She must have slammed around the apartment for an hour, rage cleaning and making dinner, imagining what she'd say, before she realized that if she started talking to him if he baited her into yelling at him, then she would likely never stop. The man had a one-way express ticket to hitting her buttons and god, but it felt good to argue with him. He didn't try to placate her, he just heard her out and counter-argued his position. God, that was attractive in a man.

She slammed the container of bathroom wipes down on the counter and looked at herself seriously in the mirror. "It is not, however, attractive in creepy stalkers with a B fetish and an under-developed sense of practical gift-giving. Also, you're in a relationship, and happy. So get a grip."

The arrival in November of the invitation to the yearly Mikaelson Ball in early December was another block pulled from the increasingly teetering Jenga tower of her life.

"You want me to go?" Caroline asked, incredulous.

Tyler tapped the invitation on the kitchen counter. "Come on, it's a second chance to do what we didn't do for that art thing. A ballgown gives you plenty of places to wear a wire."

"I don't want to wear a wire, Tyler. Same reasons." She crossed her arms over her chest uncomfortably.

"Listen," he smiled and rubbed her arm, "I mean it, we've got a good judge on our side, we can keep it a secret so we're being good law-abiding citizens." His grin said he had just told a joke, but Caroline didn't think it was funny.

"It's a lot of risk, and I'd be the person taking it all. For all you know, they have signal jammers and radio scramblers and—"

"Hey hey hey." He put both hands on her shoulders. "Okay so just. Maybe take your phone. Take some pictures. A girl with an Instagram isn't suspicious at all." That was rich, considering his opinions of Rebekah Mikaelson's Insta portfolio.

An idea occurred to her then, a way to get the damn bracelet back to Klaus without fuss and without having to lose their stalemate.

"Yeah, okay," Caroline said slowly. "Yeah, I can do that."

"Just snoop around a little. And get him to talk about something other than art." A rueful look crossed his face. "It's too bad I can't just go with you, but the invite doesn't have a plus one, and I'm pretty sure they'd kick me right out if I showed my face." He grinned. "Probably scared I'd find something if they let me in."

Personally, Caroline thought they would lock up the second set of books if company was coming over but maybe that was just her?

Tyler had gone on with his plans and ideas for her 'infiltration' as he called it, and Caroline wished she could have seen back then how much he had hidden, both behind her and from her. Looking at him now, teeth bared in pain, she wondered how much she had chosen to not see to keep herself small for the sake of her relationship. Well, those days were over.

"I have got a bone to pick with you," she said, crossing her arms and glaring down at him.

"Really?" Tyler hissed incredulously. "Now?"

"Oh I'm sorry, did you have somewhere else to be instead of trying to blackmail me into confessing to a crime I didn't commit?"

Kol's voice came from behind her. "Technically it's extortion. Blackmail's when he's trying to get money out of you." Caroline turned to transfer her glare to her brother-in-law. He walked into the circle of light backwards, carrying one end of a plain coffin, and thus the glare was lost on him. Enzo, who was carrying the other end of the coffin, did catch it and tried to flatten out his grin.

"Love, I don't think Gorgeous finds that helpful," Enzo said with a grunt as they set the long wooden box next to the hole. He straightened and cracked his back, gloved hands on his hips. "Hello, Tyler." Grin sharp, he looked him over.

"Enzo." Tyler grunted in pain. "Here to do her dirty work?"

"Just doing some heavy lifting," Enzo said easily, taking two poles with hooks on the ends from Kol, who was holding two of his own. They hooked the handles on either side of the coffin and lowered it into the ground. There was a faint creak as Kol lifted the lid and then they pulled the hooks out.

Tyler was starting to sweat. "That for me?"

Klaus was idly spinning his knife in one hand. "Let's not worry about that for the moment, I believe my wife has some things she would like to say to you."

Caroline turned back to Tyler and nodded. "I do not appreciate you insinuating that I am either fickle or a pretty vase that could be stolen, when you're the one who let his obsession with Klaus ruin our relationship."

"I am not obsessed, he just needs to pay for what he—" Tyler cut off as Klaus tapped the flat of his knife against Tyler's hand in warning.

"Oh my god, your mom is fine, she moved in with Mary Blanchet and they do Women's Club things now." Caroline rolled her eyes. "The only one with this vendetta here is you. Which brings me back to my original point: you let this whole big need to play Superman and your inability to fail change you. You started lying to me when you went undercover and didn't tell me, when you borrowed money from Klaus and didn't tell me, and then hid from Klaus and—again—didn't tell me! The literal mob comes to call and you don't warn your girlfriend?"

"Ex." Klaus was not letting this go.

"Ex-girlfriend," Caroline corrected herself, willing herself not to smile. Reminding herself of the terror she felt finding a stranger in her house once again did the trick.

Tyler swallowed dryly. "They okayed it after he showed up, it just wasn't ruled that big of a risk at the time. I mean since when does the head of the organization go after a debt collection? And l'd say you turned out fine."

"Since an FBI agent was stealing from us, you idiot. If she hadn't thrown those shoes at me and then been so delightful…" Klaus trailed off.

Kol stepped into her field of view with a hand raised, the remnants of a bruise high on his cheek still faintly yellow. He really shouldn't have stolen that photo. "Hold on, excuse me, you threw your shoes at him? Why wasn't I aware of this, and can we reenact it?"

Klaus shot him a look that was somehow both annoyed and smug. "Her heels, strappy little things. The bruise I would have had if I hadn't ducked…" He hummed.

Enzo made a distressed little noise from slightly behind her. "So that's why he keeps buying you shoes."

Kol glanced at him. "Because she keeps throwing them?"

"Santa Maria, dammi la forza, I wish." Enzo paced into sight, one hand rubbing at his temple. Caroline's face flushed red as Enzo gave her a knowing look. "When I say he really likes her in pretty shoes…" Kol started chortling, looking delighted, and Enzo sighed, looking pained. "Can we talk about this later?"

Caroline's voice was a little shrill. "Can we talk about this never?"

"Oh no," said Kol, "Let's talk about this now!"

"Let's go back to how inadequate Tyler is, I was quite enjoying that," Klaus said pointedly.

"I wasn't inadequate, I was just doing my job," Tyler protested. Blood was starting to drip from his sleeve onto the tarp below his chair, a soft little plopping noise in the background with the electrical hum from the lights. "I can't talk about active investigations; undercover work is especially secret."

Kol scoffed. "You moron, literally all one of our men would have had to do is walk up to Caroline and been like 'So Tyler Forewood is your—then—boyfriend?' and she would have been like, "No, Tyler Lockwood,"' and well fuck, your cover's blown. We knew who you were from the get go, but still."

Tyler looked like he was having a small crisis. "I was just trying to keep her safe."

Klaus leaned in with a sudden menace. "Nothing you have ever done has been with the intention of keeping Caroline safe. You aimed to throw her to the wolves, and for what? Wealth? A promotion?"

"I didn't—"

"You did!" Caroline pointed a finger at him. "Second point: your willingness to use me for personal gain. You let—nay, encouraged—me to go to that art exhibit to spy for you. You wanted me to wear a wire, get him talking, you said. You had no guarantees that Klaus wouldn't murder me in a fit of pique."

"I said we could get a judge to sign off on it without him knowing." Tyler jerked his chin at Klaus and bit back a grunt of paint, teeth clenched.

A patronizing look crossed Klaus' face. "Your old friend Greenwich? I'm sure he'll mention your disappearance at our next chess game. We play monthly, you're aware?"

Tyler looked stunned. "No, he… no."

Caroline felt the dual sensations of being proven absolutely correct in her suspicions and also being enormously proud of her husband. When she married into the family, pried with careful fingers under the edges of his meticulous little plans to peer into the clockwork insides of them, she had found a partner in ruthless application of schemes, a faultless topler of dominoes with more scope than she'd had in her tiny kingdom at The Drake.

Reaching out with forefinger and middle finger, she walked them across the back of Klaus' hand resting on the back of the chair. "Fingers in every pocket," she said, soft and sing-song. His eyes flicked up from watching her hand, heated blue under gold-fringed lashes. They told her under no uncertain terms exactly what he'd like to be doing with his fingers, if they could please move this along. She smiled slow, scrunched her nose at him.

Klaus' fingers twirled and then he stabbed the knife down through Tyler's hand.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Tyler yelled, agony in every syllable, "What the hell was that for?"

"Since you are keeping me from the extremely pleasant evening I had planned," Klaus said, wiggling the knife back and forth to the sound of Tyler's whimpers, "I'd like to inquire what kind of self-proclaimed man uses his ex-girlfriend as bait for his investigations team?"

"Seriously, he did what?" Caroline blinked. Why hadn't she heard about this?

"On several of our outings, including that first one at Carraway's, he had a little nest of agents following us with microphones and other," he gave the knife a little twist and Tyler yelped, "toys."

"Tyler! How could you do that? And not tell me?"

Tyler's face twisted sardonically. "Why don't you ask your husband, since he's so knowledgeable?"

Caroline's hand flashed out to cover Klaus' on the knife, twisted it until Tyler yelped. "I'm asking you."

"You seemed like a great distraction," Tyler spat. "They all talked to you, eventually someone would slip up. I didn't tell you because you're a terrible actress, and you kept insisting they were your friends. You wouldn't spy on your friends."

With a snarl, Caroline pulled her hand back. "Because they were, you idiot."

"Not that it did any good. The microphones either didn't work or you didn't talk about anything I could use. I just kept hoping they thought you were spying on them and they'd drop you." Tyler finished spitefully. "Annoyingly, they kept seeming to like you more."

Caroline lifted her chin. "Of course they did." They glared at each other.

"You are right," Kol said out of left field. He paced closer to Tyler's chair. "She is a terrible actress."

Caroline frowned. "Rude."

He grinned at her, his brother smile, full of teasing. "Truly awful, if I draw you for charades at Christmas I may just surrender and save us both the misery."

"It's not my fault the prompt was 'What We Do In The Shadows' and you all ran through literally every piece of vampire media in the history of the genre except for that," Caroline said indignantly, ignoring the slight twitching Tyler was doing as Klaus continued to wiggle the knife as he watched Tyler shudder at each shift of metal.

"You couldn't pull out a shamepire? Maybe the Deacon Dance? Tragic, honestly." He shook his head. "Anyway, my point—"

"Oh good, you have one." Klaus jerked the knife from Tyler's hand. He reached across Tyler's chest and wiped the blood off his knife on Tyler's shirt. The sideways glance he cut Kol was quickly losing patience. "Find it."

"Yes yes, my kidneys, I only need one." Kol waved an impatient hand at his brother as he joined them in front of Tyler's chair. "My point is she's a terrible actress, so it was stupidly obvious she didn't know what this piece of shit was doing. Took her forever to stop looking at the camera for the show alone."

Kol paused for dramatic effect before continuing, propping one foot up on the rung between Tyler's feet. "But it also means she's terrible at hiding her hurts." Klaus went still next to her, and Caroline shifted uncomfortably, having an inkling where he was going with this. Rapidly, she was trying to remember if she ever told Klaus about the illegal wiretapping Tyler had done. Something told her no.

"You must have been so confused when you listened to your recordings." Kol's little smile was cold, the normal joviality of his brand of mayhem absent. Instead, what was left was the fury reserved for family, for his people. Tyler stared back at him, defiant. "You bugged her bags, every single one. She found the first one emptying her purse, sewn in the lining. When I got there to pick her up for brunch, she was genuinely freaked. Caroline, freaked." He made a disbelieving noise. "Said she didn't know if her clothes were safe, if anything she owned was safe for us to be around. I had to get a kit out of my trunk and sweep the whole place. Thirty-two bugs, in her clothes, in her own apartment."

Kol leaned in, eyes beneath bushy brows focused on Tyler's stony expression. "The look of hurt on her face, the betrayal. I think she always thought you would fix things until she was staring at that pile on the coffee table. She asked me to let her handle it; knew some parties might be rather violent about your forcibly involving her." To the right of him, Klaus had risen in his chair to loom menacingly at Kol's elbow.

With a quick yank of his hand, Kol pulled Tyler's head to the side by his hair. "It's me, hi, I'm the party, it's me. You stupid little shit." He shook Tyler like a terrier and let him go in disgust. "You think we're the only ones the judges report their warrants to? You didn't say you were bugging her like a suspect, you called her 'an informant.' Can you imagine the delight Antonio De Luca—yeah good I can see by your face you understand I mean that fucking psycho Antonio De Luca of the Westside De Lucas—what he must have felt, getting the news that someone with Caroline's level of presumed access to us was turning traitor?"

"How dare you!" Caroline burst out, skin hot and prickly with rage. She was apparently two years too late, but she was considering decking Tyler herself. That hadn't been Tyler just misabusing some FBI resources to get some bugs into her clothes, that had been him falsifying a warrant. He would have had to have had a fake testimony from her. And he'd gotten one of his pet judges that he'd constantly been on about being so safe to get it for him and it had nearly been a catastrophe.

God, it was almost embarrassing to have picked this little creep over and over again, and we were here because he never picked anyone other than himself.

Tyler leaned away from the knife Klaus was threatening his face with, the first threads of panic starting to show. "She's fine though, right, look right there, totally fine?"

Enzo stepped up to Tyler's other side. "Because we made sure she was fine, you selfish prick. Antonio liked to cut off pieces if you didn't give him what he wanted, and he would have wanted insider information on the Mikaelsons. Do you think he would have believed that she didn't have it, even if her stubborn had allowed her to give it?"

"The answer—spoiler alert—is no, he didn't," Kol said. "That asshole died thinking we were covering up a huge conspiracy instead of the stupidest grudge west of the lakes."

"Why only west of the lakes?" Enzo questioned, hand on hip.

Kol glanced at his boyfriend. "I feel there has to be at least one grudge stupider in, say, Boston."

"Fair point, fair point." Enzo nodded with a serious air, and Caroline sighed, exasperated.

"Hold on," Tyler interjected, "You mean to tell me the wildest unsolved murder of my department was you two idiots? You two killed De Luca?"

"Four, thank you," came Rebekah's voice from the basement stairs. Two sets of shoes thumped down the steps and in a moment Bekah and Bonnie strode into the circle of light around the hole in the ground and Tyler's chair. "Sorry we're late, traffic from the airport was a bitch."

"At this hour?" Tyler said disbelievingly.

"Oh sweetie." Rebekah smiled down at him patronizingly. "You've been taking a little nap. Setting the stage like this takes time."

"You drugged me?" He looked at Caroline, horrified. "How long?"

"Couple days." Caroline wiggled her hand to indicate more-or-less. "Really shouldn't be high on your list of priorities at the moment, all things considered."

"Yes," Rebekah said brightly, "Let's go back to Antonio. I have been dying to take credit for this."

"Yes," Klaus said, soft and dangerous, "Let's do go back to Antonio, and his apparent plot to dismember my wife which you all hid from me."

There was a pause before everyone started talking at once. Kol's "Nik, don't be like that," bled into Rebekah's "You deserve to be happy, and suddenly you were whistling in the house!" right on top of Enzo's, "The culo deserved killing, we handled it, end of story." Bonnie crossed her arms over her chest and looked unimpressed.

Klaus raised one finger. "The events, if you please." His tone suggested they had very well better please. The four of them exchanged glances and pointed fingers, clearly deciding who would go first, and Caroline and Klaus exchanged their own meaningful glance.

"So," Enzo starts, "I get this call from my cousin who's low in Westside asking me why Antonio is asking for him to bring him Caroline in on the down low. I guess he mentioned he knew her once. Antonio's cousin owes him a favor, tells him about the warrant, he tells me, I tell Kol. Thank God, not ten minutes later, Caroline is knocking on my door, having broken up with this prick." He swatted Tyler upside the back of the head and Tyler scowled. He was seeming unwillingly fascinated by the internal look into his 'nemesis's' internal dealings.

"So the next day, Rebekah sticks with Caroline and sets her up in a safe building while Kol and I figured out how far that news had spread. Antonio was the only one willing to pay the price straight away, it seemed, and the judge had a very unfortunate car accident before any other miscommunications could arise. The paperwork was buried. And I imagine Tyler here," he ruffled Tyler's hair, "Wanted to keep the fact that he'd falsified a witness testimonial for a warrant quiet and didn't say a word." Tyler glowered, but accordingly, didn't say anything.

"And De Luca?" Klaus asked.

Rebekah stepped smoothly into the conversation. "What a pity to be such a sad little loose end, but he was always going to have to be taken care of. Can't leave rabid dogs to bite. That was probably the quickest hit and alibi I've arranged, but also one of the smoothest."

"You sneaky little genius, I saw the party pictures on Instagram and thought you were just avoiding helping me move," Caroline laughed.

"Well of course I was, I don't do manual labor, darling, that's what those three excellent bodyguards were for."

Squinting suspiciously at Rebekah, Caroline suddenly wondered why she hadn't seen much of Mindy, Nate, and Tony around. "You mean the movers?"

"Movers, bodyguards, people with excellent muscles there to keep you safe." Bekah flicked her fingers dismissively.

"No wonder they were gone by the time I arrived," Klaus muttered.

Bekah put a hand to her forehead. "The lookout saw you heading in with the takeout and started texting them frantically to get out. If you had seen any of them, it would have given the whole thing away."

There was this expression on Klaus' face like he was grudgingly impressed. "Continue."

"So Antonio is a creature of habit, right?" Rebekah says, the gleam of excitement back in her eye. Bonnie was watching her with an indulgent smile on her face. "Bonnie buys his personal something data online somewhere and spends what I was assured was a very gross couple hours going through it."

"It was disgusting," Bonnie says. "We really did the world a favor. Public service."

"We did. So, she algorithms that she is the best bait for our plan. Through various entrances we infiltrate his favorite Friday nightclub, and of course, Bonnie catches his eye, like who wouldn't?" She smiled warmly at her girlfriend and then seemed to remember the rest of the story. "But ugh, then I had to watch the next half hour of him pawing her, and she had to be pawed by him, and it was very gross for everyone involved." Bekah and Bonnie both made blegh faces at each other in memory. "But she got him back to the bathroom, which was the important part."

"Which is where I was," Kol took over, voice giddy with suspense. "Kol, in the bathroom, with the lead pipe. Well, not lead, they don't make them nice and solid out of lead anymore. Galvanized steel? Anyway, Antonio was all over the place by the end, Enzo pulled us out the window, and no one ever came looking for Caroline again." He sounded very satisfied with this outcome.

"And meanwhile, you and Caroline were having pasta and flirting over baseball until she threw you out of her apartment for having the boundaries of Hannibal Lector, if Hannibal Lector happened to live three floors above Clarice," Bonnie said. Klaus wordlessly slanted a look her way, and she held up a hand defensively. "Hey, who told Bekah to tell you that Caroline definitely needed a carb overload after a long day? That would be me. You're welcome."

"You're all a bunch of fucking psychos," Tyler said, staring at all of them in a kind of self-righteous horror that Caroline thought was rather high-handed for someone with extortion on their minds two days ago and by all accounts had started a chain of events that nearly got their then-girlfriend dismembered. She'd really like to not think about that at the moment.

"And no one had the thought to save us from any more of his future bad decisions?" Klaus snarled angrily, jabbing a finger at Tyler.

Rebekah tossed up her hands. "Emotional restraining order! It's what Caroline wanted! If she wanted to murder the bastard, I'd have shined up my collection."

"I think I was missing some key context there, Rebekah!" Caroline waved a hand at her sister-in-law. "The next time you all have to murder a crime lord to keep me safe, I demand to be let in on it!"

"Oh my god, Kol beats a man to death, and you're all cracking jokes about it, even you Bonnie." Tyler winced as he shifted slightly in his chair, shoulder still hanging awkwardly, face pale and sweaty. Bonnie and Caroline exchanged a look and a shrug. They could have all been enjoying fun evenings, Bonnie and Bekah still in France—again—, and the rest of them with whatever plans struck them on a Friday night, but no, Tyler made a mess of things and rearranged their whole week.

Kol leaned in once more, the anger of that memory riding him again in a keen display of the Mikaelson temper. "You may not get this—having the loyalty of a flesh-eating worm—but Caroline is ours, was ours even then."

"I have plenty of loyalty," Tyler spat. "You assholes bankrupting my mother and taking our house was the whole reason we're here."

"Tyler," Caroline sighed in exasperation. "There were a whole bunch of steps before we ever got to that point. Like, for starters, your mom spending all her money and then you borrowing money from the mob. And not paying it back. And trying to cover it up. And—"

"Okay, so I'm a little bit responsible," he interrupted her, "But there's something very fucking wrong with you that you were willing to get in bed with these freaks and I wish I had seen it earlier."

Klaus moved his chair out of the way, but Kol was already standing right there, so he got there first. He lifted one foot and with a great Georgia stomp of the heel with his Timberlands, he brought it down on Tyler's knee. There was a horrible crunching noise, and Tyler yelled and blanched. Caroline winced.

Kol bent down to get in his face. "There's nothing fucking wrong with her. You hear me?"

"I hear you," Tyler stuttered. Was the situation finally getting through to him?

"Finally," Kol threw up his hands, "Some sense." He stalked away from Tyler, muttering about looking for the chains.

"I don't think we're freaks either," Bekah tossed after him, before turning back to Tyler and shrugging, "We just have a very low tolerance for bullshit and accordingly a very low threshold for violence. One of them generally solves the other. Right now, you are very full of bullshit, so we're applying lots of violence." She smiled when he shot her a nasty look.

Klaus tilted his head to look at the swollen knee that wasn't sitting quite right while fiddling with his knife. "That looks like it hurts," he mused.

"F-fuck you, man."

The smile that crossed Klaus' face was very, very slight.

Tyler shot a furtive look Caroline's way and despite herself, she was intrigued to see what he was going to pull. "So is this it then? Are you just going to let this happen? You could prove me wrong, show me you're better than this." Oh my god, this again, guilt and reverse psychology? Did he have any other tricks?

"Gosh, Tyler." Caroline flipped her ponytail over her shoulder. "I sure hate to disappoint you, but you're not leaving this basement." His face fell, and she started ticking off on her fingers. "You came into the bar where you have been resolutely banned for years. You accused me of taking bribes from my family. You accused me of leaking… I don't know, your personal whinging to Klaus. You accused me of killing Bill. Okay, that one you got correct, well done I guess."

Tyler choked and looked back and forth between her and Enzo. "But he didn't… I thought…"

She made a disbelieving noise. "You thought I, what? Got Enzo to kill my own dad for me?" Enzo laughed at the absurdity of that statement. "Elijah was threatening my mom—"

"And we're all still very disappointed with him," Rebekah interjected solemnly.

"—and Dad started a war by murdering their kid brother. I did what I needed to keep her safe." She paused and then added quietly. "And no offense to you guys, but to keep my dad from being tortured to death."

Aside from Caroline's conversation with Elijah behind closed doors, they'd never talked about it as a family. As a whole, they'd all rather chew off their own arms than have a conversation about Henrik, or what had happened to him. There was a door in the mansion that no one ever entered, a piano that Caroline had never quite dared touch, old sketchbooks that Klaus wouldn't look at. Wounds still on display, all because of her father.

Licking his lips gave Klaus a moment's pause to consider his words. "How could I condemn your unflinching loyalty when it's something I admire so about you, love? Despite him deserving worse than what he received, I cannot begrudge my wife her heart."

Caroline paused, looked at Klaus. "I don't know that he didn't get worse, in the end."

He raised an eyebrow, intrigued. "Oh?" The part of him that had wanted to stab Bill himself for what he'd done peeked out at her, hoping for a taste of the feeling.

She shifted a little awkwardly, conscious of Tyler's judging eyes on her. "He died thinking I had betrayed him."

Klaus made a soft, considering little noise that was quickly covered by Tyler's sharp bark of laughter.

"Of course he did, you fucking killed your own old man, are you kidding me? Is that really just the type of person you are, Caroline, and I didn't see it? You betrayed him, you betrayed me for these people? You betray everyone you claim to love for—"

Klaus stepped forward and dug his thumb into the stab wound in Tyler's shoulder. As Tyler interrupted himself with a sharp yell, Klaus continued to dig around viciously, a snarl on his face.

"You, Tyler, who have known the least of her, presume to lecture about betrayal?" Klaus savagely twisted his hand, and Tyler practically sobbed, straining at the zip ties. "The truth you have never grasped—and I'm generously going to walk you through it, very important to understand one's failings, you see?—the truth that has just escaped you, is that Caroline bargained for your life with the possible currency of her own, and that," he grabbed Tyler's face with his other hand and leaned down to practically growl his words down into his face, "Has never been enough for you."

"I was grateful," Tyler protested hoarsely, face sweating white.

"Ah, but as the fabled man whose reach always exceeds his grasp, you wanted more. What you felt you were owed by your pretty ex-girlfriend." Klaus pulled his thumb with a sucking noise from Tyler's arm, and Tyler shuddered out a soft ah as blood gushed down his arm. With a shove, Klaus pushed Tyler's head back into the headrest of the chair and released him in disgust.

A quick little glance back at Caroline's angry, cross-armed stance told him how on board she was with this after Tyler's little outburst. The others were in equally pissed-off stances, although Bonnie was carefully looking away from the bleeding.

"Carol was such an overly caring mother, wasn't she, Tyler?" Klaus asked, plucking up the lapel of Tyler's jacket and wiping his hand as clean as he could get it. "Provided everything you ever wanted, ensured you never failed too hard. Doors were still being opened for you by her call to the academy waitlist."

Tyler rolled his head to glare at Klaus, cold sweat trickling down his face as he swallowed convulsively, looking sick. "Can't you just kill me?"

Klaus smiled like a knife to the throat. "So eager to die?"

Tyler grunted in pain. "No, but you beat me. Stop gloating."

"Mm. The gloating part—you may recall—was a certain picture left in your locker. This is apparently several years of my family's pent-up grievances with you and your ineptitude."

There was a rattling sound from the dark, and they all turned to look as Kol stepped back into the light carrying a mass of chains. Enzo had to grab for them quickly when Kol dumped them in his arms.

"Hold these while I sort them, they got tangled again," Kol muttered, and then the eerie clinking of chains susurrated in the background. Tyler glanced from them to the hole in the ground and started sweating again.

"As I was saying," Klaus said, getting back to his grandstanding, "On paper, Caroline and your mother must look very similar to you, names included. Freud would have been delighted to acquire your case. Pageant queens, cheerleaders. And yet nothing alike. Did you think she owed you her life?"

"I was her boyfriend, not you." Tyler hissed. "She should have been helping me instead of having lunch with your freaky siblings*."*

Caroline sighed. "And I loved you, Tyler, but I didn't owe it to you to stick my neck out for your job. I didn't want you to die, so of course I did what I could that night he showed up at our apartment, but afterward, I wasn't about to die for your crusade."

"He wouldn't have killed you," Tyler said. The slant of his mouth turned bitter. "I saw the surveillance photos, the way he looked at you. If anyone was safe, it was you."

"So sure, were you?" Klaus' voice was mocking. "Even I wasn't until I drove her home from Talbot's. You would have led her into the lion's den, expecting a tabby. Instead, you might have found a dragon, waiting in its lair. I had killed what I had thought to be prettier things for lesser sins. If I had sensed betrayal—if I had had a hint that Caroline was not who she was…" his face flickered, "Our stories would have a very different outcome. But rest assured!" His tone turned jovial as, with a great clatter, Kol's bundle untangled. "You would still be exceptionally dead. It would have just occurred that much sooner."

Tyler slid his eyes to Caroline. "You don't find it creepy, your husband talking about killing you?"

Caroline snorted. "Since I'm not a fucking snitch, no." She scooted over a couple of steps and leaned against Bonnie as they both peered at Rebekah, who was staring down at her phone, which showed a complex system of timers counting down. "That time?"

"That time," Bekah looked up at her and nodded.

"Okay, well," Caroline straightened and faced Tyler, who was sitting up more alert in his chair. "You were a fairly mediocre boyfriend. Ex!" she corrected herself, seeing Klaus open his mouth out of the corner of her eye. "Ex-boyfriend. Until you were actually a terrible fucking ex-boyfriend. I would have been happy ignoring you for the rest of my life, but you walked into my family's bar with that damn folder and the dumbest plan ever conceived. This is my family now, Tyler. I picked them, I love them."

From the corner of her eye Caroline could see Kol and Rebekah looking away like positive emotions might actually give them an allergic reaction if looked at too closely. Caroline continued, "If I was willing to kill my Dad to save my Mom, what would make you think I wouldn't kill you to save them?

His gaze was slightly out of focus as he glared at her, Tyler wasn't looking so hot as Kol knelt in front of him and started fastening on the set of prison manacles that connected from his wrists to his ankles. The puddle of blood below his chair had grown by quite a bit.

"Tyler," Bekah spoke up next. "Good riddance, finally." That seemed to be all she wanted to say and she went back to staring at her phone, clearly having better things to do.

Bonnie piped up next. "Watching you be with Care was agony, you were like this slow draining miasma on her energy. And when your vibes went rancid? There was no saving you. Those persistent spam emails for congenital warts you've gotten the past few years? That was me."

Enzo let out a short bark of laughter. "You never told me that." He glanced at Tyler. "Tyler, in addition to getting a hit taken out on her, you made her sad. You had one job and you made her sad. Please suffer."

With that, he pulled a pair of wire nippers out of his back pocket and started carefully clipping the thick zip ties holding him to the wooden chair, of which there were many. Kol might have gone overboard.

"I've said my piece," Kol said, straightening from putting the last shackle on Tyler's ankle. "I didn't like you on principle, but then I was looking at her crestfallen face over those bugs and I could have smashed your face in. You keep being annoying, which is a slightly lesser crime. Good fucking riddance."

Klaus smiled genially at Tyler. "And then, me. It's very ironic, this situation we find ourselves in. You had a possible transfer to the Terrorism Department coming up, and I was going to let bygones be bygones if you would just share some information you might have found there. Santucci in the northeast thinks my corner of the weaponry market is something he can take a bite out of. Aside from being terribly wrong, he's getting his product from some rather unsavory sources." With a flip of the knife in his fingers, Klaus slid the tip of the blade into one of Tyler's nostrils. "But no, instead of consulting appropriately with problems you could handle, you interrupted my week and threatened my wife." With the dangerous growl in his tone, it was clear the latter was the real crime.

"I wouldn't have told you anything." To his credit, Tyler's voice shook only slightly.

"No. I had hoped that reason would prevail, that the evidence of your former misdeeds would goad you into being pliable—oh yes, the evidence still exists, did you think we made it disappear for you?—but I should have counted on any man who threw away Caroline's loyalty to be pig-headed on reasonability."

He leaned it to the side, but Klaus' hand chased Tyler's head. "Is this the 'Ha ha, I've won, you've lost' speech? Real impressive, giving it to a man you've tortured and tied to a chair."

"Technically we tied you to the chair, and then we tortured you, but we're going to kill you next, so I guess you can have this one." Kol's grin was all teeth as he ducked under his brother's arm to put a lightly restraining hand on Tyler's injured shoulder. Enzo finished freeing Tyler and scooted back a few feet.

Klaus, with an air of long practice, ignored Kol. He lifted the knife point from Tyler's face, dropping his hand to rest against his side. "The only thing I ever desired was Caroline and her loyalty, and she was not something I could 'win' from you. She chose me. That is what you really lost. Goodbye, Tyler."

Reaching down to the front of Tyler's shirt, Klaus clenched it in his fist and jerked Tyler up to stand. At the same time, he slammed home the knife in Tyler's gut. Tyler gave a wheeze and went ashes under his pale skin. With a soft wet noise, Klaus pulled the knife from Tyler's stomach, and Tyler stumbled into him with a whimper.

"Shh shh shh," Klaus shushed, pulling them slightly back towards the hole. Caroline stepped out of the way as Klaus pulled Tyler down to lie on the ground. He seemed in shock for the moment, endorphins finally in overload.

Guessing her husband's plan, she knelt down next to Tyler, and he seemed to focus on her face. "Caroline?" He was blinking rapidly, his stupor passing quickly, and it was now or never.

"Don't worry, Tyler, that should kill you before you run out of air," she said. Then she and Klaus shoved Tyler over the edge of the grave into the coffin waiting at the bottom, where he landed on his back, knocking the air from his lungs. Kol gave a whoop and ran to grab the poles from wherever he'd put them, and while Tyler started to curse and yell, red spreading across his stomach, they slammed the lid of the coffin closed and flicked the locks shut with the hooks.

They all stood and listened to his pounding on the inside of the lid for a moment before Bonnie leaned around and held up a hand. "Question: why the coffin?"

Caroline sighed. "Compromise casket."

She waited for a beat, but when no explanation was forthcoming, Bonnie visibly mustered herself. "Okay, I'm gonna ask. What's a 'compromise casket?'"

"So someone—" she made ta-da fingers at Klaus, "—wanted to throw him in there and let him suffocate. And it's not like he betrayed the family or something truly heinous. And I don't want blood all over this house when we finally just renovated it to rent. So," she dragged out the word, "compromise casket. He will probably die of the stab wound which is nicely contained in there, but maybe Klaus will get lucky, and he'll suffocate, but I will never know."

Rebekah cleared her throat. "You have thirty-five minutes before the cement people get here to finish that hole, I suggest you get to burying him and cleaning up that bloody tarp." With a wrinkle of her nose at the pile of dirt waiting, Rebekah turned and flounced out of the circle of lights, and with a backward wave of her hand and a grin, Bonnie went with her. With a noise of exasperation, Caroline went to pick up a shovel.

And with that, there was nothing left to do but fold the tarp into the hole and shovel dirt in on top of it. The thumps became quieter and quieter under each shovelful until they couldn't hear them at all anymore, and Caroline felt nothing but relief that it was over. Tyler had been mostly ineffectual, but occasionally he had required careful management to ensure nothing usable fell into his hands, which was tedious. There was nothing left of the fondness she used to feel towards him, just a vague resignation and the end of a threat toward her and her family.

Soon the concrete guys on their crew, tight-lipped and unflappable sorts that were well compensated for their expertise and secrecy, were tromping down into the basement and taking over, and it was time to go home. The decorating crew would put the house back the way it should be after the foundation dried again. They were also well paid for their proficiency at hiding blood stains. What used to have been Tyler's mother's home had been bought by Klaus out of spite and completely redecorated as a vacation rental. Making it Tyler's final resting place had seemed fitting.

And still, Bekah's clock ticked on, walking them through a quick shower upstairs and change of clothes before sending them off to be captured via social media somewhere: a coffee shop for Caroline and Klaus, a dive bar for pub burgers for Enzo and Kol, and a spa for Rebekah and Bonnie. Cute, innocuous couple dates right around the time Tyler's car was being abandoned upstate.

[An Instagram post by Caroline Mikaelson in Chicago, Illinois at 5:43 PM. The picture is two Starbucks iced coffees in a carrier and two cookies on a plate sitting on a brown and white checked blanket on the grass in what looks like a picnic. The caption says "Trying not to ruin dinner." It is liked by Klaus and many people and was posted today.]

[An Instagram post by Lorenzo St John in Chicago, Illinois at 5:32 PM. The picture is on a plate a rustic pub style burger with bacon, cheese, and lettuce on the burger. Heaped next to it are french fries. There are two dipping cups on the plate. The caption of the picture says "Caroline the fries are calling." Caroline Mikaelson and many people liked the picture. It was posted today.]

[An Instagram post by Rebekah Mikaelson in Chicago, Illinois at 5:47 PM. The picture is a Black woman who's face and most of her body is out of frame in a large white bathtub picking up a glass of white wine from a marble table to the side of her. On it are a small dish of blueberries and a lit candle in a small jar. The caption of the post says "Spa day with my girl 3" It is liked by Caroline and a lot of people. It was posted today.]

Later, much later, as Caroline was getting ready for dinner, she gave herself time to think about earlier. Seated at her vanity and wrapped in a satin robe, she meditatively applied her makeup, the sound of Klaus in the shower a soft white noise to her musing.

It strangely wasn't Tyler she was thinking of, not really, but Klaus, and their odd journey to where they were today. Klaus, who had once pointed out that she was willing to burn the world down for the people who mattered most to her, and how slowly, she had come to realize that Caroline herself needed to be one of those people.

She never would have thought it of the Mikaelsons, selfish and squabbling as they were, but it was amazing the way you could grow when you were given the room and support to do so. Even if it was just being consentually kidnapped at 3 am for pancakes because you had a case of the sads. If they happened to spend the rest of the night in the Mikaelson's casino underneath the place, well, they had to come anyway, really Caroline think nothing of it.

And then the ways they showed they loved her by taking care of her even when she hadn't been strictly 'family' yet. They had hid a perfectly planned and executed hit from her for over two years. She'd been oblivious! To be fair to Kol and Rebekah, they'd probably just lost track of their kill count again.

Honestly, all of this was to avoid thinking about the one thing that was eating her up with curiosity.

The sound of the water turning off with a squeak made her blink back to awareness. She squinted at her reflection and set down her blush brush, rubbing at one cheek to slightly even out the color.

Klaus came out of the bathroom, steam warming the air and clinging to his skin damply, a towel slung low around his hips while he finger-combed his just-curling hair into cooperation. Glancing up into her face, he paused. "Is something wrong?"

Oh god, it was really enormously unfair when he expected her to form words with all that lean muscle on display like honestly she could just go over there and touch him. Right no question, he asked a question. "No!" She answered, probably a beat too late because he gave her a look and she rolled her eyes in fond exasperation. "No, you're just…" she waved a hand at his whole everything in the reflection of her mirror, "being disruptive to my thought patterns, thank you very much. I'm fine. Just… thinking."

A smug little smile tugged the corner of his mouth. "What are you thinking about?" He stalked forward until he was standing behind her, the heat from his body and the shower such a warm presence at her back. With barely-there fingers, he traced up the satin sleeves of her dressing gown.

Caroline watched him watch her in the mirror. "You said something earlier and I didn't know you had felt that way so…"

His hands paused. "To what are you referring to?"

Fidgeting slightly, Caroline glanced away and then back at him. "You said you knew that I was, I dunno, The One on that first drive back to my apartment from Talbot's. I didn't know you had a moment. I know I was drunk so the experience was a little different for me, but I can't imagine what you saw between me throwing up on your shoes and being super depressing." She snorted out a little laugh. It was funny now when she knew how much he spent on shoes without blinking.

Resuming their light caress, his hands were a pleasant distraction. "The whole night was one pleasant surprise after another. No, truly." He said to her little snort of disbelief. "Rebekah texted me the link and said you were at Talbot's. It was clear you weren't using my name for an in with my brother. Irritated to be discussing me at all, really. It was… gratifying. Then he started live-streaming the next bit and I watched it on the way there." He smiled slightly, appropriately interpreting her usual glare for unsafe driving, and he bent his head, bushed his nose against the back of her ear making her shiver. Voice low and rumbly, he said, "And when I got there, and you offered me a blowjob in the booth like the little teasing minx you are…

"It was just a drink," Caroline said innocently.

Klaus' hands pressed firmer up to her shoulders as he dragged the tip of his nose down to her neck, breath feathery and hot on her skin as she tilted her head and bared her neck. "Is that what you told yourself that night, wrapped in my scarf?

Watching them both in the mirror, Caroline clenched her hands in her lap, dug her toes into the plush rug beneath her feet, the urge to reach, to grasp for him now that she could always so present. "You can prove nothing," she said, trying not to smile.

He lifted a hand and cupped her jaw, turned her face towards his. "You wanted to play with me; that's practically unheard of. I am a great many things, most of them soaked in blood and fired to ash. That people flinch at my name is a never-ending delight. But I also found that I enjoyed that you did not. Instead, your chin would come up, and your eyes would brighten. And your tongue, your clever, vicious tongue," he kissed her, opening to her slick as sin, lips a plush heat against her mouth. His own tongue slid against hers, teasing hers to twine, to play. When he broke things off she chased his mouth with a keening whine, and with a soft growl he gave her another drugging kiss, tongue a hot wet slide that made her clench her thighs.

"There," he murmured, pressing a chaste kiss to her mouth that lacked none of the heat for its sweetness. "That mouth. Every time you opened it, I wanted to do unspeakable things to it."

"And in the car?" Caroline's voice was a little breathless.

He hummed. "In the car, you sat soft and flushed, conversed with me like your confidant, and I wanted you like I have wanted nothing before." Klaus ran the back of his fingertips down the edge of the front of Caroline's dressing gown. "Although at this current moment…" He wiggled his fingers as if making a decision, and then lowered his voice like they were playing a game. "What's under here? Give me a hint."

With a grin, Caroline played with one of her curls. "Green and rhinestones."

Klaus made a rough little noise in the back of his throat, looked down at her with heated eyes. "I have just the pair for that." His fingertips left a heated little trail down her arm, and then he pulled away and disappeared into their walk-in closet.

Tapping her phone on the vanity, Caroline checked the time. "You know if we're late, Rebekah's going to send Kol in to get us, she has a schedule tonight." That said, she spun around to sit backwards on her stool and crossed one leg over the other.

"The door is very, very locked," came Klaus' dry voice, and after a moment he reappeared carrying a pair of heels by the ankle strap. When he knelt in front of her, Caroline gasped softly at the shoes made of black leather straps, the toe and midfoot straps covered in rhinestones reminiscent of a certain bracelet of hers.

"The perfect sparkle," she said softly and offered her foot. Klaus deftly buckled her into one and then the other, fingers a ticklish tease against the arch of her foot. They admired the sparkly picture they made on her feet.

"Well, now—" Klaus started to say, starting to stand, leaning forward, only to be bought up short by her pressing one heeled foot against his collarbone. His eyes followed from her foot down the trail of her leg to her dressing gown and up to the no-doubt goading smirk on her face as she balanced leaning back slightly. "Yes, sweetheart?"

Caroline untied the robe and the satin cloth slithered apart and down her body, baring her to Klaus' gaze. Underneath was an emerald green set of bra and panties, twinkling with little loops of rhinestones. Klaus went still as his eyes traced rapidly over flushed skin and sparkling lingerie. She held up one finger.

"Do not rip anything."

And then she opened her hand like a welcoming at a feast and removed her foot and slid it against his hip, pushing the towel down. It slipped down his legs, baring his cock for her view and she smiled in pleasure to see him hard for her.

He slid his hands under her legs and pulled her up against him, and she wrapped her legs around his waist with a squeak of surprise as her arms went around his neck. "Oh love," he said, nose a soft rub against hers a contrast with the hard cock pressed against her center, "Do I break your rules?"

She gave a roll of her hips, one leg wrapped so her pointy little heel was digging into his ass. He hissed, heat in his eyes as she surely left bruises for him to remember this by later. Caroline would leave more before they were done.

Grinding down on him, she caught his mouth on the gasp they both let out. Klaus' fingers would leave their own pretty prints on her thighs as he hauled her up as he stood. A few steps took them crashing together into the door, rough moans escaping from clacking mouths. Hands sliding into his hair, she dragged his lips back down to hers with a whine and he licked her lower lip into his mouth and sucked.

Three sharp raps on the door made Caroline surface with a gasp and Klaus let out a low growl of frustration. Absently, she knocked a knuckle back against the door twice. Fifteen minutes.

"Well," She said breathlessly, and a bit nonsensically after so long, "You may not break my rules. Technically. But you love to break Rebekah's."

A sly grin, hot as any of his that had tempted her into sin, slid across his face. "Hold on tight then, wife. Shall we break some rules?"

Enzo's Italian:
e vietato l'accesso, negato - prohibited access, denied
Santa Maria, dammi la forza - Saint Mary, grant me strength
Culo - asshole