Once their paths cross, their worlds will never be the same.
Danny Moore and his crew only meant to rob the hotel suites of rich guests. He wasn’t supposed to find himself in gangster Ricky il Sacchi’s room. And il Sacchi wasn’t supposed to wind up dead. Now Danny has the attention of another notorious gangster.
Carmine Battaglia is intrigued by the Irish thieves who would have made off with a huge score if not for il Sacchi’s death. They’re cunning, careful, and exactly what he needs for his rum running operation. But Danny’s already lost two brothers to the violence between New York’s Irish and Sicilian gangs, and he’s not about to sell his soul to Carmine.
With a gangster’s blood on his hands, Danny needs protection, whether he likes it or not. And that’s to say nothing of the generous pay, which promises to pull him and his crew—not to mention their families—out of destitution.
Working together brings Danny and Carmine to a détente, then to something so intense neither can ignore it. Something nearly enough to make them both forget the brutal tensions between their countrymen.
But the death of Ricky il Sacchi hasn’t been forgotten. And someone is determined to make Danny bleed for it.
The Venetian and the Rum Runner is a 144,000-word gay historical romantic suspense novel set during Prohibition and the Roaring Twenties.
CW: graphic violence, PTSD
Author’s Note
Times have changed, and the world is a different place in the 2020s than it was in the 1920s. While researching The Venetian and the Rum Runner, I wanted to be sure I understood the culture of the time so I could show it accurately in this book. Relevant to this story was New York’s vibrant queer culture, as well as the racial tensions between the city’s Irish and Italian communities.
In this research, I was introduced to the vocabulary of the era, which has certainly evolved in a hundred years.
Some of the queer-related terms used in this book can be interpreted as derogatory today but were widely accepted epithets in the early 20th century. For example, it was commonplace to identify men who presented in a feminine fashion as “fairies” or “pansies,” and many self-identified in this way. Those terms could, as many slang terms can today, be used in a derogatory way, but were largely accepted as part of the vernacular of their time without negative connotation.
Similarly, the sexual practices between men were typically viewed as reflecting a gender identity rather than a sexual one, such as considering the top or bottom roles to imply a male-female dynamic.
In order to keep this book as true to its time as possible, I have chosen to adopt the language of the day, and I have attempted to write in a way that reflects how that language was used in its time while also remaining sensitive to the contemporary reader, both in regard to racial conflict and queer subculture. For example, certain terms for queer men and queer sexual practices appear throughout, but like they would have in a book written in the 1920s, their interpretation as derogatory depends entirely on context.
For an in-depth look at the queer culture and identities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in New York, I highly recommend Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, written by George Chauncey. Much of what I’ve written in The Venetian and the Rum Runner is influenced by Dr. Chauncey’s Lambda Award-winning book, an extensively researched look at queer culture and history, particularly that of working class men in New York.
A link to Gay New York and other resources I used while writing this book can be found after the last chapter.
Chapter 1
Manhattan
January 2nd 1924
At quarter to ten the second night after New Year’s, having arrived at the address on the card he’d been given, Danny Moore found himself standing in the falling snow outside a butcher shop.
It was still open despite the late hour. He supposed that wasn’t a surprise, especially as a young couple sauntered in through the front door in attire no one wore to visit the butcher. Clearly, then, this was not unlike the florist shop that acted as a benign and perfectly legal front for the speakeasy Danny frequented. Given that the man he was here to see was a powerful bootlegger, a front seemed more likely than Carmine Battaglia moonlighting in the meat business, particularly the business of staying open late to sell meat to