The Rat Boss is a darkly playful Prohibition-era crime tale told through the eyes of rodents who run the underworld beneath New York City. Narrated by Ratto Salvatore Mancini, a sewer-born rat who rises from obscurity to power, the story mirrors the rise of real-world Italian mob families during America's alcohol ban?only here, every bootlegger, politician, and enforcer is a rat.

As humans shut down the flow of liquor aboveground, the rats seize the opportunity below, building empires in tunnels, basements, and forgotten spaces. Through betrayal, loyalty, violence, and ambition, Ratto chronicles how a so-called vermin becomes a kingpin, blurring the line between survival and corruption. Gritty, satirical, and strangely human, The Rat Boss reimagines Prohibition as a fable about power, identity, and what it truly means to be civilized.