It was a hell of a show. The footage was being imaged on a massive flat-screen LED TV hanging on the wall at one end of the conference room. It was five o’clock on a Friday night, two days after Steve had somehow escaped the trap set for him at the Gall Building. The Imperium, once one of Atlantic City’s most stellar attractions, had recently fallen on hard times. It consisted of a shoebox-shaped casino building attached to a towering skyscraper hotel. Like the rest of the gaming industry, the Imperium’s receipts had fallen off drastically due to the depressed economy. Its fiscal woes were compounded by the inept management of its owner, real estate magnate and obnoxious TV personality Dudley Crimp. Dangerously overextended and already in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Crimp had seen the recession ruin any last chances for him to recoup his fortune. He had already been forced to take a loan from the White Tiger, a leading yakuza crime clan based in Osaka, Japan. The loan had long since been squandered, and the yakuza’s oyabun, or godfather, was most rudely insistent that Crimp repay the outstanding debt.
