Chapter 19 - The Laundry Room of Cellblock 4 and the Penniless Restitution
Winter returned to Chicago with a vengeful,
freezing fury.
Inside the basement of the federal correctional facility,
the air was thick with suffocating heat,
scalding steam,
and the overwhelming stench of industrial bleach and soiled linens.
This was Cellblock 4 Laundry Operations,
the hardest,
most grueling labor assignment in the entire prison system.
Standing before a massive,
roaring commercial washing machine,
shoveling heavy wet sheets into the spinning drum,
was Ethan Cole.
He was forty-two years old,
but he looked sixty.
His spine was permanently bent,
his hands were covered in cracked skin and chemical burns,
and his front teeth were discolored from years of cheap prison food.
The sleek,
arrogant co-founder who once wore three-thousand-dollar tailored suits and drank champagne at Prime 108 was long gone.
In his place was inmate four seven nine two zero,
a man who spent eight hours a day lifting two-hundred-pound laundry bags for a miserable wage of twelve cents an hour.
Every Friday afternoon,
the prison inmate payroll system processed the wages earned by the working prisoners.
Ethan walked slowly down the concrete corridor toward the financial clerk's window,
holding his blue inmate ID card.
He stood in line behind five other prisoners,
his body aching with profound,
bone-deep exhaustion.
When he reached the window,
he slid his card through the narrow slot under the bulletproof glass.
"Inmate Cole,"
the prison clerk recited monotonically,
checking the computer monitor.
"Hours worked this week: forty."
"Gross earnings: four dollars and eighty cents."
Ethan leaned his forehead against the cold glass,
whispering desperately.
"Please,"
"tell me I have at least two dollars left for commissary."
"I need to buy toothpaste,"
"and a bar of soap."
The clerk tapped her keyboard,
shaking her head without looking up.
"Negative,"
the clerk said flatly.
"Under the mandatory federal restitution enforcement order filed by Vance Global Capital,"
"eighty percent of your gross earnings are automatically deducted at the source."
"Deduction for civil restitution: three dollars and eighty-four cents."
"Deduction for court processing fees: ninety-six cents."
"Net pay deposited to your account: zero dollars and zero cents."
Ethan stared at the clerk,
his eyes filling with hot,
bitter tears.
"Zero?"
he gasped,
his voice trembling.
"I worked forty hours in that boiling basement!"
"I burned my hands!"
"I washed dirty sheets until my back bled!"
"You're telling me I don't even get fifty cents for a bar of soap?!"
"Take it up with the court,
inmate,"
the clerk replied coldly,
sliding his blue ID card back through the slot.
"Miss Clara Vance's legal team has a permanent automatic garnishment order locked on your account."
"Until your one point eight million dollar debt is paid,"
"every cent you earn belongs to her foundation."
"Next inmate in line!"
Ethan clutched his blue ID card tightly in his raw,
bleeding hand.
He stumbled away from the window,
walking back toward his cold cell,
leaning against the damp brick wall to keep from collapsing.
He realized the full,
horrifying elegance of Clara’s vengeance.
She had not simply sent him to prison.
She had turned him into her indentured servant.
Every time he lifted a laundry bag,
every time he inhaled the scalding steam of the washing machines,
every single second of his physical labor was spent working for her,
earning pennies that flowed directly into the bank accounts of the woman he had tried to destroy.
He sat down on his plastic mattress,
staring at his burned,
soapy hands,
May you like
surrounded by the deafening silence of Cellblock 4,
knowing that he would spend the rest of his miserable life washing clothes to pay back a debt he could never clear.
