The old country. Sonny Forelli was dead, but his tentacles had reached across the Atlantic to a network of cousins in Sicily, who had ties to a Russian oligarch, who had funded a militia in Syria. The chain of blackmail was simple: either Tommy Vercetti traveled to Aleppo to retrieve a lost Forelli heirloom—a cache of pre-war antiquities and a data drive with financial codes worth half a billion—or the evidence of his past murders would be leaked to the Feds.

The meeting was set in the ruins of the Baron Hotel, a shell of Art Deco elegance. Tommy walked in, MP5 hidden under a long coat. The ballroom was a morgue of shattered chandeliers. In the center, on a throne made of sandbags, sat The Son.

“The Forelli treasure?” Abu Rami laughed, a dry, hacking sound. “You Americans. You think everything is a heist. The data drive you seek is under the Old City. The tunnels beneath the citadel. But two things control Aleppo now: the snipers in the west, and the ghoul in the east.”

The accountant paused. “For where, Mr. Vercetti?”

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.

“Tommy Vercetti,” The Son whispered. His voice was a wet rasp. “I played your game. Vice City. On a PlayStation in a penthouse while the bombs fell. I thought, ‘This man knows chaos.’ But you don’t, Tommy. Your chaos has a reset button. Mine doesn’t.”

“The ghoul?”