Disclaimer: I don’t own the GTA franchise in any way, shape or form. Please don’t sue me.

“Whisper”

Slipping the last shimmering button into the slit on the opposite end of his black shirt, he brushed it down, admiring himself in the mirror; the matching shirt and trousers, the polished shoes, the well-toned body, the defining facial features, the slicked hair, the faint moustache and the devilishly handsome chin stubble. He grinned; he might’ve been forty, but he still considered himself a ladies’ man.

He ran a hand over the stubble, feeling it. It was prickly, but nonetheless made him look attractive. His smile grew wider. Turning away from the mirror, he made his way out of the large en-suite dressing room, walking into his large bedroom, the blood-red walls lined with forged replicas of famous paintings; Da Vinci, Picasso, they were all there on display, not just in the one room, but throughout the whole property.

Today, the city’s proprietor had a simple plan. Today was Saturday, his favourite day of the week; he could go and collect his weekly wages from the businesses he had acquired throughout the city. It was to be a simple trip – take a bouncer or two for protection, and calmly make his way around, picking up more cash to add to his already vast fortune.

It would be quick and easy for him, the journey he had completed dozens of times before. And it would happen without a single problem. Nobody dared to toy around with the likes of him. Rumours and stories of what had happened to the last upstart who had attempted such a thing had kept any wannabes off his back for the last two years.

Thinking of this incident back in the summer of 1989, the man’s smile faded initially, then came back just as quickly when he remembered the joy of hooking up the car batteries of his Cheetah sports car to the jumper cables, which in turn were clamped where they probably shouldn’t have been. How many volts was it again? He couldn’t remember; it’d all been too funny, in a sadistic sort of way. The look on the guy’s face had been priceless to him. Wherever he was now, he had absolutely no hope of fathering children.

Putting his mind off it as he briskly walked out onto the landing of his large estate, he made his way down the small set of stairs and calmly strolled into his office. He ignored the cameras which he usually would’ve checked every day years ago – nobody was stupid enough to go anywhere near the premises – and made his way to the charcoal-black marble desk. Sliding open the highest drawer, he gazed almost loving at his prized Colt Python revolver, cushioned in red velvet, loaded the night before with six bullets. He gripped the butt of the weapon and removed it from the drawer, closing it.

As always, he briefly unlatched the chamber and spun it around before latching it again. He then walked out of his office, taking the staircase down two steps at a time. Once down, he turned left and walked into the small recreation room, which housed a television, snooker table, two leather sofas, and a glass table. A mini-bar was in the far corner, the area behind the bar lined with vintage beverages, with a small fridge housing cooled beer; he was a man who liked a frigid refreshment at the end of a hard day’s ‘work’.

Ignoring everything else in the room, he walked over to the coat rack in the opposite corner of the room and picked up a black blazer to accompany his attire. This, however, was no ordinary blazer. It held a stitched-in holster designed specifically for his most precious revolver, and the mild extra bulk of the blazer was due to the sewn-in body armour, fitted to his exact specifications.

Slinging the blazer over his shoulders and slipping his arms in, he quickly slipped it on, buttoning the three large buttons in fewer than five seconds. Pulling open the right breast of the blazer, he slipped his revolver inside the holster, and quickly brushed down the suit once again before heading out of the room. In the main hall, he signalled for two of his bodyguards to accompany him. They obeyed without hesitation, checking their Uzi submachine guns before taking their respective positions either side of him as they accompanied him out of the building.

Outside, at midday, the sun was at its peak height in the sky, providing the usual sweltering temperatures one would come to expect in the city, along with next to no humidity whatsoever. Yesterday’s weather forecast had predicted temperatures of around ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit; still, the weather came to ruthlessly molest their ‘accurate’ predictions. It was more than one-hundred-degrees. The little tourist kids crying about how their ice creams had melted proved to be the most obvious telltale sign of this.

The temperature hit the city’s underworld proprietor relentlessly as soon as he stepped out of the mansion, causing him to unbutton his shirt a couple of notches from the collar. He hoped, and despite himself prayed, that he could get the air conditioning to work in his Sabre Turbo. He breathed in deeply as he stood at the top of the stairs leading down to his garage of four-wheeled royalty. He edged over to the side, under the enclosed walkway. He revelled in the gust of cool, chilly wind that hit him. He restricted himself to one refreshing gust only, and stepped back out into the baking heat.

He stood at the top of the stairs for another few seconds before he began to make his way down. There was only one problem with this.

He didn’t.

The razor-sharp, jagged messenger of death pierced straight through his prized bulletproof blazer, the scorching lead making mincemeat of his heart muscles. It was an armour-piercing round; he didn’t have a chance. He eyes were still wide from the shock. Slowly, he slumped to his knees, his world going dark just as he hit the ground. He heard the panicked and desperate cries of his two trusted protectors. What a great job they’d done of doing exactly what it said on the tin. But he couldn’t blame them. Life was ebbing away from him, the rapidly expanding pool of his own blood sure to drown him.

What had it been? Minutes? Seconds? He couldn’t tell and he didn’t care. He could still hear his bodyguards opening fire on the opposite buildings, trying to take out somebody who had obviously been intelligent enough to flee when they’d fired the fatal shot. The raging voices, the deafening gunfire…were getting fainter and fainter, drowning out into nothingness.

So faint were they now, that he just ignored them. He was already dead, he was sure.

Now, they were barely a whisper…