Author's Note: I realize I haven't updated in a fucking year, and I very very much apologize for that. My interests tend to fluctuate rapidly. I'll try harder, I promise. I just hope people are still around to read this thing.

There'll be some references to San Andreas and Saint's Row in this chapter.

The year, I suppose, is 1999.

The yard stretched on forever. Tommy Vercetti watched it out of his office window, looked at the imported grass and the freshly scrubbed sports cars in the driveway and the big bright sun above it all, that trademark Vice City sun, making the water around the island sparkle. A woman in a halter top walked by his front gate and a burly bodyguard in a Hawaiian shirt and a suit said something to her and the woman giggled and walked on.

Tommy's office was the same but different, the styles subtly updated to suit the modern age. He wore an expensive sport shirt and a summer weight dark red suit with a small pink hankerchief pointing out, the outfit bought by one of his mistresses for a birthday the year before. His face was older, deeper set and lined by his years of stress controlling organized crime in Vice City, and his hands sitting on the arms of his oak framed desk chair were pampered and manicured.

He hadn't touched a gun in seven years. His hair was black, peppered with gray. When he swung the chair around Paul Lazzarro could see that he'd gotten his teeth recapped, the one's he'd lost in the streets of Liberty City replaced with space age pearly whites.

Tommy fucking Vercetti. The most feared Forelli enforcer ever now looked like he belonged in a golf club instead of hustling on the street. How you do go on.

Vercetti pulled a cigar out of a large case on the desk, lit it with a gold Zippo which he tossed to Lazzarro who lit a cigar of his own. Reports lay on Vercetti's desk, legal stuff: invoices and cash balances of his various businesses, court summonses for his henchmen, letters of thanks and letters of want from local charities. Vercetti threw the letters away and put the bills and balances in a tray on his desk and said, "Who've I got today?"

Lazzarro checked his watch: nearly eleven in the morning. Vercetti had already met with his four liutenants: Nance, Mosca, O'Reilly, and Urbano, the captains who controlled various sectors of his influence in the city, had already heard their various problems and had already devised solutions. It left only a few things for him to do: handle miscellaneous meetings and talk with out of town men.

Out of town. In the years since Tommy's split from Liberty City mob factions the gangsters had all come for him, asking for help and supply, and Vercetti, in addition to his hearty income from Vice City distribution, began selling his product wholesale to gangsters nationwide. Carl Johnson, a black guy who pretty much ran crime in the East Coast bought from him. Julius Bonner, a boss from Stilwater, bought his package. A Carcer City mobster named D'Amico bought from him.

All of them did. Except the Liberty City bosses who just couldn't get it out of their heads. Vercetti knocked off Sonny Forelli, a deed that could not go unpunished. But they couldn't very well just send a guy after him, could they? Especially with the friends he had, with the muscle he had.

Speaking of muscle.

"You've got..." Lazzarro ran through the list in his head, hating Vercetti's 'nothing on paper' rule. "Lee Ronalds, the hardware store guy. He owes a few thousand in protection, hasn't paid for a while."

Vercetti nodded. "We already send Mickey after him?" Michael "Mickey Pipes" Hanna was Vercetti's chief enforcer, a Stilwater killer who had more bodies to his name than almost any other gangster or murderer in the country.

Lazzarro nodded. "Yeah, he said that Ronalds oughta' pay up this time." Lazzarro adjusted his glasses, lit a cigar with Vercetti's lighter and tossed it back. Lazzarro was essentially a consigliere, the right hand, and if Vercetti should die he would probably be the one to take over the whole operation.

"Alright," Vercetti said, "Who else?"

"Let's see...Gigi Baca, one of Urbano's people, he wanted to talk with you about something to do with some guys shaking him down."

"What the fuck? He can't go to Urbano about that shit?"

"He wants to talk with you. You want me to call him, tell him to piss off?"

"Yeah. Fuck him. Thinks he can go around the fucking chain of command."

Lazzarro made a note on a pad of paper on his lap: 'CALL GIGI'. Vercetti's wedding finger had a ruby ring on it and he clacked this against his desk impatiently, waiting for Lazzarro to continue.

"Alright," Lazzarro said, "We've got...one of Robina's people, wants to meet with you on behalf of Umberto, guy named Amistád. It's about some problem they're having with, uh, unaffiliated dealers on their corners."

In the years since Vercetti took control, Umberto Robina and his gang went to work for him, under his captain Sanguaro Urbano. They became the street connection, his main distributors, the guys that sold the shit he got from Colombia out on the street. Robina ran things well: the man had a nice house on Vice Point well away from the ghetto.

"Alright," Vercetti said.

Lazzarro continued, "And we have Louis Vachss."

Vercetti leaned back his chair, his face slightly surprised. Louis Vachss: this soon. "Christ," he said. "Louis. I ain't seen him in...fuck, how longs' he been in?"

"Since '89," Lazzarro said, pulling out Vachss' rap sheet. Arrested and convicted 1989: homicide in the first degree. The sentence was twenty to life, up for parole in ten. The only reason Vachss ever even GOT that parole, as violent a prisoner as he was, was because of Vercetti's friends in the system who put in a good word.

And also because he paid thirty grand to the parole board.

"Vachss...was a time you'd hear that guys' name and shit your pants, you know?" Lazzarro knew. When Vercetti took power he organized his gang, put everyone in their crew, insulated himself. One man stood out among all others, a man in Mosca's crew who ran stolen cars and pulled liquor store robberies on the side, a twenty one year old hoodlum from the trailer park with no money to his name and his family already in the ground. Vachss was vicious, more than any one person should be. Vercetti picked him, groomed him: showed him how to dress, how to talk, how to hustle.

Told him how to kill.

Louis Vachss murdered over thirty people in Tommy Vercetti's service, all in the years between 1986 and 1989. In 1989 he pulled a job risky even by his standards: a job on police. Three cops murdered in three nights, a pistol he left behind un-wiped of prints at one scene came back on him, and he was locked up before Vercetti could say 'bribe'.

Vercetti didn't know how he fared in jail. He sent packages every few weeks: money, cigarettes, porno mags, sometimes drugs. Vachss never called, never sent a letter.

At the mention of Vachss's name, Mickey Hanna said from his shadowy position by the door, "You talkin' bout that curly haired little mook what whacked out them cops way back when?"

Hanna stood six foot four, two hundred fifty pounds, a wall of brute force and savagery. Tommy said, "Use some respect, you talk about that guy. He's done more work in three years than you done your whole life. When's he comin' in, Paul?"

Lazzarro said, "One o'clock. After Robina's man."

Vercetti nodded, said, "Get him some hookers for his room at the hotel afterward, alright? Give him a homecoming. I gotta' throw a party for this guy. Jesus Christ, Louis Vachss."

Lazzarro said, "You think he can still hold a lit match to his eye without blinking?"

Vercetti snorted at the memory of Louis's old party trick. "Shit. After ten years inside? He can probably catch bullets in his fucking teeth."

Author's Note: Next chapter should be soon, I promise.