Excerpt: Birthright

In which I mistake my Italian mobsters for my Triad mobsters and have to write my way out of it (some offensive language included)

"Two strips."
"East wind."
"Five million."
The mah jong game proceeded at a good clip, the tiles clinking against the table and each other as the four players took turns drawing, shuffling their holdings, and mumbling their discards into the middle. One kept collecting public trios, skipping over Boss's turn each time. Boss would have voiced his annoyance had it been anyone other than the Godfather. Instead, he kept quiet and waited for the last tile he needed to make his grand dragon.
"You like this game?" said the Godfather as he picked up a fourth west wind and drew from the other end of the [thingy].
Boss shrugged. "It's not bad. Why are we playing it?"
"Don't know," said the Godfather after a pause. He frowned suspiciously at the table. "It was like this when you came in."
"You mean, we don't have to play this?" Lieutenant piped up in his customary nasal whine. "Shit, man. Why are we playing this? Let's go back to poker."
"Shut up and play," said the Godfather. "I just need one more card. We can stop when I win."
"Yeah, me too," said Boss. Lieutenant grumbled and went back to staring at his row, fingering first one tile and then another. Boss narrowed his eyes at the jumble of tiles already face up on the table. His winning one wasn't there. Yet. One really good discard from someone, though, and he could win big. Really big.
He wondered how he knew that. Had he ever played this game before? Had he ever even seen it before? He couldn't remember. But he knew the rules like he'd been playing since he was born. It was damn odd.
"Eight tong." The winning tile.
"Fang Pow!" shouted Boss, reaching across the table for it.
"Pong!" shouted Godfather at the same time.
"What?" Boss stared at the Godfather in disbelief. "But that's mine! I've been waiting for that."
"Yeah? Too bad," the Godfather took the tile and smugly inserted it into his row, then knocked over the sauce pair he still had left on the inside. "Pay up, Lieutenant. You've just made my day."
Boss forced himself to sit back down and shut up. He didn't want to die over it, and anyway, he hadn't fang powed.
"Ohferfucksakes. That is just not fair," whined the Lieutenant as he started counting out most of his chips. "This game sucks."
The Godfather laughed. "Right. Yeah, all right, whatever." He turned to stare accusingly at Boss. "Wanna tell me why we're playing mah jong like we're Triad whores? Because, Lieutenant there has it right. It was poker until just before you got here."
"I don't know," said Boss. He shrugged helplessly. "I've never seen this game before in my life."
"What are you doing here anyway? You're supposed to be watching the Sprouts in the Belfry district."

[and then the real point of the scene started up. :) ]