Page 29 of Forbidden Billionaires: Vol. 8
“Fax machines are how all the biggest business deals are done! Is this an office or a barnyard?”
Honestly, after the battle royale earlier, it kind of looked like a mix between the two.
I looked up at Tanner. “I’m definitely gonna get fired, right?”
“Na. Nigel has got it handled.”
“Does he? Because I’m pretty sure this place looks even worse than before.” I pointed to some cubicle walls that had been broken in half and stapled together in a short rectangle. “Did he turn that cubicle into a bathtub?”
Tanner tilted his head. “Why yes, I believe he did.”
“I think we better help them.” I started to kneel down to gather some papers off the ground, but Tanner stopped me.
“Really, Nigel will handle it. And we don’t want our food to get cold.” He put his arm out for me and guided me through the mess of the office. I felt bad not stopping to tell Chastity all about Tanner confessing his love for me and us basically being an item now. But she was a bit predisposed with Nigel...
“NIGEL!” yelled Chastity as we waited for the elevator. “Put me down!”
“Not until you take me to the fax center,” he replied. “It must be around here somewhere…” He started running towards our supply closet with Chastity over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
“What’s his obsession with fax machines?” I asked. “Is he stuck in the 80s?”
Tanner pulled me onto the elevator. “Technologically, yes. It’s a sad story, really. The poor lad had always been on the cutting edge of technology. And he’d never thrived more than he did when he got his hands on his first fax machine. He quickly grew Odegaard from a small costume shop into a global fashion label. But when the internet became a thing in the 90s, Nigel and I were in Russia buying up every factory the government would agree to sell us. It was all done using old soviet tech. And then we went straight to Kolkata. And the only tech Nigel used there was a hand-operated rickshaw.”
What in the world?There was so much to unpack there. “I have so many questions.”
“Fire away.”
“First off…is Nigel a genie too?” Tanner had mentioned the young lad being alive in the 50s…
“Yes.”
“Makes sense. Second question - why did we just walk past your car?”
“I prefer to walk. Or take a carriage. Motor cars aren’t really for me. Nigel will grab it once he’s finished at the office.”
“Okay. Um…” My head was spinning. “So you really started Odegaard? And you bought a bunch of Russian factories in the 90s? Are you an oligarch?” I stared at him. He’d been alive for 343 years. He must have a bajillion amazing stories. And I needed to hear them all.
“Yup, I started Odegaard. And yup, I was a Russian oligarch. I’d never seen such great deals on factories before.”
“But aren’t the oligarchs all in trouble now that Russia’s being naughty? Isn’t the government going to take all your yachts and freeze all your assets?”
Tanner shrugged. “They would if they knew who I was. But Nigel created quite a tangle of LLCs when we moved back to New York. And he did it all via fax, so the paper trail is a total mess.”
“Speaking of Nigel, what the hell was Nigel doing operating rickshaws in Kolkata if you guys had millions of dollars?”
“Trillions of rubles, actually.” He opened the door to the Gochujang Palace and held it open for me. “And we went to Kolkata because of the movieHitch. Seeing Hitch’s expert matchmaking got me thinking that maybe I could break my curse after all. So I started doing research about matchmaking, and I realized that Indians are expert matchmakers. Their arranged marriages have extremely high success rates. I needed to figure out why.”
“And what’d you find out?”
“Eh, not much. But it was fun watching Nigel ask Indian couples invasive questions about their sex lives while giving them rides on his rickshaw through the busy streets of Kolkata.” Tanner grabbed our takeout and said something in Korean to the guy at the counter. Or at least, I assumed it was Korean.
“Did you just speak Korean?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“When did you learn Korean? Wait, how many languages do you speak?”
“Oh geez. I don’t know. Let’s see… English, obviously. Bengali, Russian, German, Ital…”
