The Venetian and the Rum Runner - L.A. Witt Page 0,25

Danny wanted.

But how many alternatives did he have left?

At Sunday Mass, exhaustion rolled off Rowan. That was nothing new, but Danny couldn’t ignore his brother’s fatigue this time. Sitting in the pew between their eldest brother’s widow and his own wife, Rowan looked like he’d aged a decade in the last year. Heavy shadows darkened the skin beneath his bloodshot eyes. He gazed blankly up at the altar as if he didn’t even hear a word Father O’Reilly was saying.

Danny made himself stare up at the altar, but he could sense the strain coming off Rowan like cheap cologne.

Rowan had taken the deaths of their brothers even harder than Danny had, and he was working himself into his own grave trying to feed his wife and children while also doing what he could to help Hugh’s widow and young son. Soon, he’d have a third child of his own to feed, and God knew if Eliza would be able to keep working this time. She’d been so sick after the birth of their second daughter, she’d barely been able to care for herself and the children, let alone continue sewing dresses for neighborhood women and girls.

It was part of why Danny had moved a few blocks away into his own apartment, despite barely being able to make rent. Living with his family like most of the lads lived with theirs would have been easier by far, but he’d wanted to be one less mouth for his brother to feel obliged to feed. Danny did what he could to help, but no honest work had ever been enough to keep his own cupboards full, never mind do a damn bit of good for the family. He suspected his sister-in-law knew the money he did give them came from less than honorable origins, but she never asked questions. She probably never told Rowan, either; desperate as they were, he was a proud man, and he’d refuse every penny that came from his baby brother, no matter how it had been obtained.

But it was never enough. Not for Danny and James. Not for Rowan, Eliza, and the family. There was always something they couldn’t afford. Someone shivering in the winter or sweltering in the summer. Someone’s stomach rumbling while the children ate what little there was.

We shouldn’t have to live like this.

What if we don’t have to?

Throughout Mass and afterward as people socialized in the sanctuary, Danny’s mind kept going back to Carmine Battaglia and the offer of a job. Whatever in God’s name that job entailed, it had to be more money than he and his friends were making as petty thieves. That was one thing few disputed—the gangs paid well, and they didn’t stiff people. It was bad for business, after all.

They certainly paid better than anywhere Rowan found work. Stealing a glance at his brothers’ children on the other side of the sanctuary, all Danny could think was that a little more money would put some roundness and some color back into their wee sunken cheeks. How long had it been since any of those children had known a real meal? Or a night wrapped in thick enough blankets with a robust enough fire in the stove to keep them all warm?

And that was to say nothing of the lads. Like Danny, some of them had family back in Ireland. Peter and Liam almost never had anything to eat themselves after using their scores to heat their cramped apartment and feed all the family living in it with them. Tommy’s brother couldn’t work after an accident had left him barely able to walk, never mind look after his children. Mathew’s wife and eldest son had never fully recovered from the Spanish Influenza, so he was forever struggling to afford food and medicine. The lot of them always had shame in their eyes when they came to church, not just because they were thieves, but because not one among them had a thing to tithe.

Danny could change all that. All he had to do was say yes to Battaglia.

He surveyed the parishioners still socializing in the sanctuary of Old St. Patrick’s, and he shifted his gaze from one gaunt face to the next. His family. His friends. Their families.

What kind of man am I to leave them all cold and hungry if I don’t have to?

So the question that remained—was Danny’s honor worth watching his one surviving brother work himself to death to keep his family from starving? Was it worth