I had only two rounds in the magazine when the pistols came out. I know, I know, nothing was stopping me from packing another clip when I got back from the shooting range that morning. But in my defense, who predicts a gunfight in a sushi restaurant?

Except maybe the Yakuza…

But no, I’m sure they’ve got more self-respect than to stab someone over sashimi. On the other hand, the Aiellos have never been ones to concern themselves with niceties. They’re the ones who survived the government crackdown on the mafia decades back by whistleblowing on pretty much all of the other Families in the City. They then proceeded to brutally murder every person who kept them from taking over, and quite a few people who weren’t.

I’ve actually seen their head, Adrian Aiello, a couple of times. My brother’s even had to sit down for lunch with the guy, for reasons it appears I’m not permitted to discuss here. He seemed pleasant enough, but most people do when you’re not at their mercy.

So now you understand a little more about the players, let’s set the scene: Ryan and I were having dinner at the Sushi Sampan fairly late in the evening, late enough we were allowed to stumble through the doors, exhausted, without making a reservation.

The Sampan is mostly run by Chinese staff and management. Plus, the sushi itself is thoroughly Americanized, with dollops of avocado and mayonnaise galore. It’s essentially fast food at this point, but hey, I like fast food.

Not to mention the staff makes this sushi in a little kitchen surrounded by a moat, sending servings of sushi over to people at the counter in these lovely cardboard canoes. With a gimmick like that, no wonder the mafia showed up at the establishment. I’d come here every week if it was closer to home.

Before all this went down, Ryan and I had been sitting at the counter, munching on California roll and arguing about the new Shadecatcher reboot. We were both eating the sushi by hand. Which, I’ll inform the chopstick-slinging know-it-alls, is perfectly acceptable in Japan. Although I’m pretty sure even if it wasn’t I would’ve done it anyway. Because what’s the point of paying for the food if you’re not allowed to eat it the way you like?

“Look,” I said, waving at the chef for another order. “I don’t care what sci-fi shit you have to say about ‘incarnations’, but the character was always cooler as a cowboy.”

“You’ve got cowboys on the brain.” Ryan said immediately, stealing all the remaining pickled ginger. “The flexibility of the character is the point. Just because you don’t like the cyberpunk genre doesn’t mean everyone else won’t.”

“Okay, but if we’re talking about personal opinions here -” That’s about when Adrian Aiello walked through the front door, and my blood froze in my veins.

We weren’t even in Aiello territory. I should know, because my brother had drawn very clear lines on a map and made me memorize them. He’d pissed off quite a few members of the family in the last couple of years. Adrian may have liked Ryan enough to sit down for lunch with him, but things had changed since then. A lot of lines had been crossed, and not just the ones on the map.

“I don’t see how opinions have anything to do with it.” My brother said, cheerfully tapping my arm in code. “I mean, cyberpunk and cowboy stories both feature lone rangers wandering the earth and battling evil along the way. If you have an objection to one and not the other, that’s probably because of a pure change in aesthetic.”

He’d been obsessed with Morse code when we were younger, but the years told him it would be faster just to agree on a set of words. Plus, you’d be surprised how many people have to learn Morse for their jobs.

Ryan gave 3 long taps interspersed with two short ones. DANGER, because apparently that wasn’t obvious already. He then added the code word for NO WEAPONS, then EVADE, and SPLIT UP. Even as he chattered away, he slipped some false teeth and a bristly mustache on, styling his hair to fall a little more closely around his eyes. The last touch was a pair of black contact lenses I’d never seen him use before.

Each of these elements would’ve looked a little ridiculous on their own, but they added up to something oddly convincing. And irritatingly enough, his guise ended up reminding me a lot of… well, me.

Our backs were still turned to the Aiello contingent, but I could still hear them yelling for more sake and grilled octopus. Ryan tapped my shoulder, and with a deep breath I turned and got up.

I understood my brother’s logic, sure. We’d have a better chance of not attracting attention if we went out alone. People recognized us as a pair. I was pretty sure Aiello wouldn’t recognize me on my own merits, anyway. All the same, it felt like he was throwing me directly into the line of fire.

Okay, Dylan, deep breaths. It’s just another asshole with a big gun. You’ve met plenty of those before. Hell, you do it every time you look in a mirror.

I turned and started walking. The way Aiello and his men were seated, I’d have to go right next to them to get to the exit. Maybe I’d be better off running to the bathroom and trying to stuff myself through the window. Never mind that we were three floors up.

The first thing I noticed, when I gave them a proper look, was that I never imagined those outfits on the Mob. I mean, this was almost blinding. Sequins, rhinestones, bright blue blazers. Almost flashy enough to conceal their holstered guns (semi-automatics, by my judgement, but it was hard to tell more than that until they were out of the holsters), walkie-talkies and bulletproof vests. It looked like they’d wandered from a military exercise to a disco, and apparently sushi had been judged as worthy of capping off the night.

I took a deep breath and walked in what I considered to be a businesslike, confident pace towards the door. I could smell alcohol, but when you’re dealing with gunmen that’s hardly cause for celebration. They might not shoot as accurately, but they’d do a hell lot more shooting.

Aiello himself was shorter than the others, with high cheekbones and long, dark eyelashes. I was sure he’d been made fun of at the playground for those. And also, possibly, in the conference room. He’d compensated with rippling, powerful muscle and a large black beard. He ground his teeth, glaring at me when I met his eyes.

In retrospect, doing that was a big mistake.

“You.” He snarled, when I was five feet from the door. “You, stop.”

I turned around, briefly considering keeping my hands up. But no. A layman probably wouldn’t notice the guns, and I really didn’t want to draw more attention to myself.

“Yes, what is it?” I asked. I don’t have Ryan’s skill with voices, so I tried to keep it simple. I spoke with the strongest Sri Lankan accent I could come up with. I’m sure a real native would’ve strangled me for the insult, not to mention a long line of relatives. But most of the men seemed to accept it without question.

The guy on the left, clearly the tipsiest, hiccuped and groped around on the table for his sake glass. “Adrian, man, if you want to mess around with an Indian, you can always go down to Rajah -”

I could audibly feel the new undercurrent of tension in the room, especially amongst the other people gathered around the table. Aiello grabbed the drunk man’s head and smashed it into his own glass of sake. The man howled as it shattered, scrabbling at the shards that had embedded themselves in his face.

“Aidan. Not Adrian. Aidan. Is not calling me by my brother’s name the least that you can do? People come to me all the time, and they ask: Aidan, why not try to take over yourself? And I tell them that I’m content serving the family. I don’t mind being underboss, I truly don’t. But a man can only tolerate so much disrespect…

“Oh, and stop mewling like a kitten, or I’ll make you eat that glass.”

I blinked. Brother? Adrian had a brother? It had to be an identical twin. That felt like something Ryan should’ve told me before. Although he probably had, and I just wasn’t paying enough attention at the time. Some of these mafia family trees have grown gigantic over the years, you know.

All the other customers looked pretty disturbed by all this. That alone made me sure this wasn’t a regular Aiello watering hole. Even the head chef, who probably should’ve known better, reached for his phone before one of the men put his hand on his gun and glared at him.

But that meant someone here would try calling the police eventually. The gunmen couldn’t keep track of them all. Probably more than one call would get through. Maybe enough that even the policemen with the fattest pockets and most materialistic mindsets would be forced to act.

Aidan turned to shake his head at me just as I started inching towards the door. It was hard to tell if the man was drunk or if this was how he normally acted.

“And don’t think I’ve forgotten about you, Mr. Indian. I have a bone to pick with you, I do. But first I want your opinion on this. Do you really think I should be blaming my men for mistaking my name? Maiming them like this, eh? Or should I blame my shameless gold-digger of a mother for thinking names like Aidan and Adrian were perfect for her sons? Or perhaps I should blame my father for not stopping her?”

“Umm.” I, Dylan Neville, blinked and looked around for my brother Ryan. Where was that idiot, anyway? “I can’t say I can relate, sir.”

Aidan’s face soured. “I thought you’d say something cleverer than that. Where’s that intelligence of yours I’ve heard so much about? Though I suppose you’d want to stick to your disguise, flimsy as it is, Mr. Ryan Amadeus Neville!”

He hiccuped a little and glanced over at the man he’d smashed the glass in. “He always stresses the middle name, you know. Never really got why.”

I didn’t know whether to have a heart attack or burst out laughing. “I - I don’t understand…”

“Don’t play games with me! My gold-digger of a mother always said I was perfect at recognizing faces! Your hair’s a little frizzier, and your skin’s a bit darker - that’s called blackface, you know - but I’d recognize you anywhere! You humiliated me, you know, at the docks. Switching out that shipment full of hookers with the billhooks. Disguising yourself as Carlos, of all people. I always swore when we met again that I’d make your death slow and painful.” He hiccuped again and scowled. At this point I was pretty sure he’d been drinking long before he got in here. “But to tell you the truth, I always imagined this under… less fuzzy circumstances.”

Play along, Dylan. Play along. I took a deep breath. “Okay, but like really, that’s your fault, don’t you think? I mean, look at this place. It’s a sushi restaurant. Not even in Aiello territory. Hardly a spot for a climactic confrontation.”

Aidan waggled a finger. “Ah, but it is Aiello territory right now. I was against it, but you see, the wider Camorra looked into our business and concluded we and those Mirza dogs would make more profits if we exchanged a strip of territory. We signed it just about a mile away from here. The Mirzas would get a few extra shipping points, and we get exclusive control over most of Hartview. I’d say we got the better end of the deal, personally.” He must’ve seen a flicker of confusion cross my face. He sighed. “Give me a moment.”

He started rummaging in his pockets for a map. Most of his men still looked tipsy enough to be confused. They knew the Neville kid was bad news, but clearly not such bad news that the boss wouldn’t sit down for dinner with him. And I didn’t even really look like him…

Which is why I took the risk of immediately drawing my pistol and pointing it right at his head.

I’ll say this about the man. Aidan sobered up considerably the moment he realized he wasn’t in control of the situation. He looked up, and his glare turned subzero.

“If your men move an inch, Mr. Aiello… well, you know the drill.” Damn it, where was Ryan? Was he trying to call down the National Guard or something?

“You’re a pretty fast draw.” He said, licking his lips and waving his men down.

Stay confident, Dylan, stay confident. I grinned. “I know, right? I’ve been practicing."

“However,” the underboss continued, “You must not be very good at math if you think four,” He looked at the man still picking glass out of his face in the corner, “three men against one is ever going to end with you alive.”

“Stop thinking about my math, buddy, and start thinking about yours. Because I might not guarantee I can come out of here alive, but I can guarantee you won’t.”

It was a lot of bravado, but I could see in his eyes that it wasn’t going to work. He was going to go for his gun. Because at the end of the day, if he let himself get intimidated here, he might as well throw in the towel and walk away from the Family completely.

I was fast, and they weren’t operating at full mental capacity. But I only had two rounds left in the magazine. I reckoned I could use both of them before someone else fired. And I might survive if the third one’s gun jammed, or, or…

Then we all heard a crackle of noise. Someone cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sirs.”

Ryan stood, still with his mustache and tousled hair, but he’d supplemented his disguise with a waiter’s jacket and shirt. He held a walkie-talkie in his hand, the screen lighting up.

“You dropped this, sir.” He said to Aidan Aiello, who seemed rather reluctant to turn his gaze away from me and the gun pointed right at his forehead.

There was a long, crackling sigh from the walkie talkie. “Damn right he did.” Said a voice that sounded remarkably similar to Aidan’s. But not quite the same. It was a rougher tone, with the accent a little less Americanized. Or maybe the walkie-talkie was distorting it.

The underboss, on the other hand, looked more irritated than surprised. “Adrian? Damn it, man, can’t you see I’m busy here?”

“The radio waves don’t permit me, unfortunately. But I can still hear everything loud and clear. Killing someone over sushi, Aidan? Couldn’t you wait at least a few hours after the negotiation before trying to upend it completely?”

“But it’s him! It’s the PI! The one who works with the cops! Don’t you see I had to take the chance while I had it?”

Another long sigh. “We’re still in the process of exchanging resources, idiota. You think consolidating power is as easy as one, two, buckle my shoe? Killing one of the Mirza assets this early could upend the whole business.”

“Him? He was working with those Arab dogs all this time?” Aidan looked gobsmacked, and while there were no mirrors on hand to check, I must not have looked any different.

Ryan’s expression, while still holding the walkie-talkie, looked more uneasy than surprised.

“Mountains are less dense than you, brother.” Adrian Aiello continued. “We’ll be lucky to avoid paying off the Saudis for trashing their restaurant. Now, go.”

As if on cue, we started hearing police sirens in the distance.

Aidan gave me one last snarl and gestured at his men, who grabbed their wounded comrade and followed him outside. He didn’t even take the walkie-talkie back, either.

Ryan practically collapsed into a chair. “That,” He said. “Might quite possibly be the worst gamble I’ve ever gone through with.”

“A gamble?” I asked. “Wait, you didn’t actually convince Adrian Aiello -”

My brother pressed something on the walkie-talkie and it came to life. Then out of it came the same Aiello voice. “Oh, I assure you I didn’t. For one thing, convincing him I’m taking money from the Mirzas would be much more difficult.”

I stared at the walkie-talkie, then at his face. “How? Did you use a deepfake program, or what?”

“Even if I could modify a walkie-talkie that way, there’s no way I had time to do it. No this is all-natural.” The voice came from the walkie talkie again. “Pay attention to my face.”

Sure enough, when I looked very closely, I could see some muscles in his throat moving. Maybe even a bit from the lips, but the mustache did a good job of obscuring that.

“Changing my voice to match a radio transmission isn’t very difficult. Even mimicking Adrian Aiello was much easier, especially with the natural distortion of a walkie-talkie. Plus I’m fairly sure they were drunk enough to be easy to convince.”

“He wasn’t really looking for a fight.” I admitted in retrospect. By the standards of people like him, he’d been practically a beacon of tranquility. “But I still don’t get how you made it seem like your voice came from that device.”

“Ventriloquism is mainly a trick of the eyes.” Ryan said. “Haven’t you seen people making their puppets talk on stage? It’s harder to do when you don’t have a moving mouth to draw people’s attention, but I modified the walkie-talkie enough I could make it do what I wanted to. A very crude rewiring, but I was pressed for time.”

Sure enough, he made the device flash and hum like someone was speaking through it, even though no sound came out.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “You think real fast on your feet, huh? But it won’t take the Aiellos long to figure out what you did.”

“Adrian won’t make that revelation public, even if he does figure it out, which limits his options against us. It’s too embarrassing. No doubt he’d prefer to sweep the whole thing under the carpet. And who knows? Maybe he really does believe I’ve been paid off by the Mirzas. It might be an effective deterrent, at least for the near future.”

“Maybe.” I said. I popped a nearby sashimi into my mouth, chewing. Now that the threat was gone, a little bit of that old bravado came back. We heard the sound of footsteps outside the door, blue and red lights shining through the windows. “You know, I think I would’ve stood a chance against those four, if it had came down to a fight.”

Ryan patted my shoulder. “I know. But part of my job is making sure it never has to.”