He wasn’t in Vice City anymore. The synthwave soundtrack of his life had been replaced by the drone of a piston-engine drone overhead and the distant, rhythmic thump of artillery. He stood on a rubble-strewn balcony, a gold-plated Python revolver in his hand, staring at the carcass of the Great Mosque. Its minaret, once a proud finger pointing to heaven, was now a jagged stump.
The Son clapped. Two of his men dragged in a man in a filthy suit—the real Ahmed Hassan, whose identity Tommy had stolen. The man was crying.
He never went back to Syria. But sometimes, late at night, when the air conditioner hummed, he could still hear the artillery. And he knew that for all his money, all his guns, all his empires—he hadn’t escaped Vice City.
The Chechen pilot reneged. He wanted double. Tommy shot him in the foot and took the plane himself. As the propeller churned to life on the highway, The Son appeared on a rooftop, a rocket-propelled grenade on his shoulder.
Vice City: Aleppo
He packed a single duffel bag. No suit this time. Kevlar vest, a silenced MP5, the Python, and a fake passport that identified him as “Ahmed Hassan,” a Lebanese antiquities dealer.
