Rayce Flaubert

"Then you're a dead man walking! You and your family, and those poor poverty-looking drug dealers you hang out with - you're all dead! It's your choice."

- Rayce to Lopez

Rayce Flaubert appears as a central character and the secondary antagonist of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City's Serbian (BC).

Rayce is a French gangster and a made man in the France and US based Fortunato Regime, in which he serves as a soldato and loan-shark/debt collector. He works alongside his father, Francois Flaubert, a Fortunato spy. Gay Tony Prince owes him money, thus forcing him his right-hand Luis Lopez to work for him.

Info
Rayce was born on 21 December, 1982 in Cannes, France. He is a made member of the Fortunato Regime and a distant relative of Gracie Flaubert. He is often seen alongside his father, Francois Flaubert, being more influential within the mob than him despite his young age. Rayce is a soldato, a Soldier, as well as he has connections to Fortunato capos Tomasino Lo Bello and Diamond Tiara.

GTA
Sometime prior to the events of GTA: Vice City's Serbian, Tony Prince borrowed a huge loan from Don Paul Fortunato. Due to Tony being unable to pay his debts to the Fortunato Regime, Paul sends Rayce and Francois to make weekly collections from Tony.

Rayce appears for the first time in "I Love LC" when he and Francois are seen collecting money from Tony. He also meets Tony's bodyguard Luis Lopez and immediately throws high-class slurs at him and a similar fashion, calling him a "poverty-affiliated hobo" and a "red commie peasant", prompting Luis to respond and refer to Rayce in a SJW-style insult as a "fascist bigot". He also voices his clear dislike for Tony, as he frequently mocks him with insults such as "poor person who came from dumpster", knowing Tony is not in the position to fight him back. Behind his back, Tony and Luis agree that he is a "wanna-be" who is "out of his league" and they constantly mock him.

After sometime, Rayce tasks Luis and Tony to help him interrogate a union official at a golf course. However, members of the rival mob attack the place. After the mobsters are dealt with, Rayce leaves with the official, presumably to further interrogate and kill him.

This help from Tony and Luis does not wipe out the debt and Flaubert again gives a mission to Tony and Luis: seduce the girlfriend of Viktor Mazinko and take over his club. Luis ends up killing Viktor and barely makes it out alive after an ambush by Triads. Luis suspects that Flaubert set him up.

Rayce is seen again in Tony's apartment, during a coke party. Some guests of the party include Evan Rant and Gracie.

In a complex chain of events, the diamonds attract thieves who kidnap Gracie and demand the diamonds. Don Fortunato makes a truce with the original owner of the stolen diamonds, William Borlinghathen, and both blame Rayce, Tony and Luis for the incidents. Rayce, in a twisted gesture of compassion, offers to spare Luis and own the clubs with him if he personally kills Tony. Although he briefly considers it, Luis instead kills Francois and is about to kill Rayce, but Tony saves him by telling Luis that he is a made man. Rayce then flees. Shortly after, Luis and Tony fight off a Borlinghathen hit squad.

Flaubert is not heard or seen again after the completion of the game. When Luis calls Rayce's number, Rayce's voicemail message states that he has fled Liberty City to "lay low" for a while, "commie sithbags".

Rayce is later shown to be in Los Angeles after he escaped from Liberty City, New York. After coming to LA, Rayce led the mob business there and robbed Michael De Santa once when he needed money.

Death
Later on, a greedy Rayce and his friend Gianni Hazelbeak break into Solomon's studio and assault Solomon for not giving them money, unlike Michael, who did. However, Michael arrives just in the nick of time as he was about to meet with Solomon and after helping up him to get up on his feet, a barely alive Solomon tells Michael to get Rayce and Gianni. Michael obliges and chases both Rayce and Gianni out of the studio and throughout the city. After wrecking their car, Michael kills Gianni and then murders Rayce as well.

Personality and traits
From his appearances, Rayce is shown to be an extremely arrogant, sadistic, cocky and disrespectful Fortunato gangster who shows open contempt towards Luis and Tony and is rude to almost everyone he encounters.

Rayce and his father Francois have a dark sense of humour derived from their sadistic pleasure of making other people around them miserable and their delight in bullying and mocking them in whatever way they can and make them feel more and more uncomfortable. Like Francois, Rayce insults by class and political system, as he uses various slurs towards both Luis and Tony, even if they are higher class, (such as "commie bastard","red Valirover stain", "hobo" and "peasant who is way too poor to even exist") as they know very well that Tony can't and won't fight them back. Luis, however, is not afraid of Rayce and does not put up with his and his daddy's harassment and bullying, as evidenced when he fires a similar slur but in an SJW way ("fascist big") in Rayce's direction.

Rayce takes great pride in being a member of the Fortunato family and often expressed his belief that his connections made him untouchable. Despite all of this, Rayce usually avoids brutal violence and rather makes somebody else perform violent acts on his behalf. Despite his supposed connections, Rayce's true colours reveal that he is a very cowardly individual as he fled New York the moment his father was murdered to escape from Luis' wrath.

Luis voices his contempt of Rayce to his face and distrusts him. Flaubert, though normally very disrespectful, prefers Luis and occasionally delegates to him when trying to restrain or exclude Tony. Rayce also showed that he has a small degree of trust in Tony's business practices - despite saying his judgement is clouded by a "midlife crisis", as he sees a very big monetary value in Maisonette 91.

Rayce appeared to like Luis more than Tony (even though Tony tried any way he can to pay off his debts to the Fortunato mob while Luis did nothing) and he offered to wipe out the debt if Luis kills Tony. Ironically, Luis killed Francois instead and was ready to shoot Rayce when Tony defended him and said it was a bad idea because Rayce is a "made man" (a soldier in the Fortunato mob). With this act, Tony saved Rayce's life, even though Rayce heavily insulted him and was going to have him killed by Luis, who couldn't kill his friend because of the too good relationship.

His arrogance and cowardice carries over to Los Angeles; he arrogantly insults Michael during his first robbery, and after his second rob with Michael goes poorly, he attempts to intimidate Solomon (a much older man than either Rayce or Michael) and immediately flees when Michael appears. What little violence Rayce needs done in his life he does himself, but that may be only because his diminished circumstances mean he has nobody else to push it on.

Trivia

 * Rayce's first voicemail is one of the four shortest voicemails in the GTA game. (Yo, it's the Rayce. Leave a message, poorboi.) the other three would be Jacob Hughes's (Yah, I'm busy. Call me back l8er.), Phil Bell's (This is Phil Bell. Leave a message.) and Dave Norton's (Dave Norton. Leave a message.) However, after he leaves the LC, he changes it to a longer one.
 * Evan Rant claims Rayce could have lent Tony $2 million (he suggests Gracie as well, and both of them could have, in turn, borrowed it from Don Fortunato).
 * Judging by dialogue from workers at Fortunato's warehouse, it is possible that Rayce intended to establish a crew of the Fortunato mob in Los Angeles although these plans eventually fell through with the deaths of him and Gianni.