The Billionaire's Fight for Redemption Starts at Five A.M. novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Five A.M.
Cal Ellender shows up at the gym in a suit with a check for the roof; Dee voids it and hands him a mop, then points to the man on the bench.
The man in the doorway wore a charcoal suit that cost more than my gym's roof.
It was four fifty-eight in the morning, and the rain was coming through that roof into a bucket by the ring.
"Dee Kozak?" he asked.
"You're early," I said. "That's the first good thing about you."
He looked at the bucket, the six heavy bags, and the cracked skylight with a strip of duct tape across it.
I watched him decide how to say what he'd come to say.
Cal Ellender, forty years old, founder of Ellender Logistics, had been on the news for six weeks.
I had seen his face on the television above the juice machine at the grocery store.
In person he was taller, and tired around the eyes in a way the cameras hadn't caught.
"The court sent me," he said. "Two hundred hours. I'm told you sign the sheet."
"I sign the sheet."
I took the clipboard off its nail and held it up.
It had one column for the date, one for the hour he started, one for the hour he stopped, and one for my initials.
"You start at five," I said. "It's five. Mop's in the closet."
He didn't move toward the closet.
He reached into his jacket and took out a long envelope, and I knew what it was before he opened his mouth.
"Before we begin, I'd like to be useful," he said.
"I read about the gym."
"The lease, the roof, the heating."
"My lawyers say a donation would be fully deductible, and it would help the kids more than my mopping would."
He held the envelope out to me.
"It's a good number. Please look."
I didn't look.
I took the envelope and read what was on the front of it, which was my own name in a stranger's careful writing.
Then I tore the end off, pulled out the check, and read the number.
It had a lot of zeroes, and I was surprised to find that my hands were steady.
"That's two million dollars," I said.
"Yes."
"For a roof that costs forty thousand."
"I thought you might want a margin."
I almost laughed, and I hated that I almost did.
I took the pen off the clipboard and wrote across the front of the check in block capitals.
VOID. NOT MINE TO CASH.
Then I put it back into the envelope and pressed it against his chest until he had to take it.
"Mister Ellender, I run a boxing gym," I said. "I do not run a car wash for the conscience."
His jaw tightened.
"I'm trying to help."
"You were sentenced to help."
"That's different."
"What you do with your money is between you and your accountant."
"What you do with your hours is between you and me."
"The money would do more good."
"Not here it wouldn't."
I opened the closet and took out the mop and the yellow bucket and set them at his feet.
He looked at the mop like it was a language he'd failed in school.
"The floor around the ring first," I said. "Then the bathrooms. Then the bag room. Mop, don't push the water around."
"I have people for this."
"You have me. Start."
He took off the suit jacket and folded it over the end of the bench, very neatly, and rolled his sleeves to the elbow.
His forearms were corded and sun-freckled, and I looked away from them faster than I'd like to admit.
I wrote 5:02 in the start column, and I wrote it in pen.
He mopped for ten minutes without saying anything.
He was bad at it.
He pushed the water from one end of the ring apron to the other and left a gray tide line along every board.
"Wring the mop out first," I said.
"I did."
"You waved at it."
He wrung it out properly and went at the floor again.
I stood by the gym's front desk with my coffee and watched the water in the bucket go from clear to brown.
I told myself I was watching to make sure he did the corners.
It was five-thirty when the side door opened, and a man came in shaking rain off his Dayton Dragons cap.
I didn't turn around right away, because I knew the sound of that door and the sound of those boots.
Thursday mornings at five-thirty belonged to Ray.
He hung his cap on its hook and sat on the long bench by the wall.
He took his coat off slowly, because it took a different kind of slowness to do it with one hand.
Cal Ellender kept mopping.
He was bent over the corner by the speed bag, with his back to the room.
I put my coffee down on the desk.
My voice came out lower than I'd planned.
"Mister Ellender."
"Dee. Cal. Please, if we're going to share a mop."
"Stop mopping."
He straightened up and turned around with the handle in both hands.
He saw the man on the bench.
He saw a stranger in a gray hoodie with the left sleeve pinned up at the wrist.
He gave him the small polite nod you give a stranger at a gym.
Ray didn't nod back.
Ray looked at him.
I stepped closer to Cal and spoke so only he could hear.
"You don't know who that is, do you?"
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