Keep Your Friends Close... (GTA Vice City)

Updated 30 October 2026 · Fan site. Not affiliated with Rockstar Games or Take-Two Interactive.

Keep Your Friends Close... is the final story mission of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002). Sonny Forelli comes to Tommy's Starfish Island mansion to collect his cut, Tommy tries to pay him in counterfeit money, and Lance Vance turns on Tommy. Tommy defends his safe, kills Lance on the roof and then kills Sonny, leaving him the boss of Vice City.

What is the final mission in GTA Vice City?

The last story mission of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is Keep Your Friends Close... It closes the conflict between Tommy Vercetti and his old boss Sonny Forelli of the Forelli family, which began when the drug deal at the start of the game went wrong. For the steps before it, see our Vice City missions list.

How do you unlock Keep Your Friends Close?

gta.wiki lists Cap the Collector, the last of the Print Works missions, as the job that opens the finale. Tommy starts it himself at his mansion on Starfish Island, and he needs at least $1,000 in his pocket or the game will not let it begin.

The setting matters. The mansion was Ricardo Diaz's home until Tommy and Lance stormed it and killed him, as Wikipedia recounts, so the finale is fought in the house that marked the start of Tommy's rule. Having Lance turn on him there gives the last mission its sting.

What happens in Keep Your Friends Close?

Sonny has flown down from Liberty City to take what he thinks he is owed. Wikipedia says Tommy arranges the meeting at the mansion and plans to pay with fake money. At the meeting Tommy accuses Sonny of setting up the ambush that sent him to prison for fifteen years. Sonny then reveals that Lance Vance has told the Forellis about the plan. Lance openly switches sides and calls it business.

The rest is a shootout in three stages. First, Forelli gunmen storm the house and Tommy has to keep them away from his safe. Next he follows Lance up through the mansion to the roof, where Lance waits with a few hitmen, and kills him there. Finally he heads back down to the office, where Sonny and his last men are waiting, and kills Sonny. gta.wiki notes that Tommy brings up the fifteen years one more time before the end.

What is the reward for the last mission?

How does GTA Vice City end?

After the shooting, Tommy finds Ken Rosenberg. gta.wiki describes Tommy briefly pointing his gun at him before lowering it. Tommy calls the fight a disagreement with a business associate and says there will be no more trouble from the north. The two men look out over the city as the credits begin. Wikipedia sums up the result: with the Forellis gone, nobody is left to challenge Tommy's rule over Vice City. Our Ken Rosenberg page covers what happened to that partnership later.

Why does Lance betray Tommy?

Wikipedia says Lance had felt inadequate next to Tommy ever since Tommy's rise to power. Our Lance Vance article covers his story in both Vice City and the prequel Vice City Stories in more depth.

What does the mission name mean?

The title borrows the saying about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, which gta.wiki links to The Godfather Part II. gta.wiki also reads the mansion shootout as a nod to the ending of Scarface, with one key difference: Tommy, unlike Tony Montana, survives.

The finale makes a neat contrast with The Exchange, the last mission of GTA III a year earlier. Both end in betrayal, but where Claude's story finishes on a mystery, Tommy's ends with him in full control.