The puppeteer

-And so Connor, what is it like to have this high power in your hands alone?- asked the man in front of him, as he slowly and carefully drank a sweet and warm tea from one of the precious cups of porcelain.

The young man looked away from his uncle, lowered his blue eyes until they met the white and cold floor that lay beneath them, he thought.

Connor still could not believe of having become king, yet no, because it was not what he had wanted himself and perhaps he would never have accepted the role because the only woman he had truly loved had died.

But his uncle did not understand it, for him the important thing was that the efforts that had been made during his life, of care and dedication to his nephew, had led him to indirectly take power over the nation.

The Jones army had overwhelmed the guards, who by now, dispersed in England had not been enough to prevent the family from usurping the power and after long weeks of bureaucracy, Connor was temporarily put in power as the only son of Georg Hannover.

For this reason too, his uncle had forced him to use another surname: he had to be called Hannover, like his father, giving up Jones, the surname that was so dear to him, as it had been the surname, not only of his uncle but also of his mother.

Why was he forced to use that surname? That unbearable and hateful surname that he over the years had learned to repudiate as an enemy, why did he do this to him? Why did Jacob Jones do this generally? How could he expect for his nephew to bear the surname of his father, a man who in the past had raped Connor's mother generating him?

-I am fine, uncle, but on the one hand I feel sad, I think of my mother, your younger sister, when she was still alive, I thought, she has never told me too much about my father for a fair cause, but now I find myself bearing the name of a man I hardly know - the young lord admitted looking up, meeting the man's face -so tell me uncle, tell me more about this man you killed yourself...-.

At those words it almost seemed that the man was shocked in front of such impudence, on the other hand he didn't love to talk about that event so much, but he also found this curiosity reasonable on the side of his nephew and felt that perhaps telling him would be the best option.

Jacob Jones lowered his gaze to the precious and woody surface of the table, exhaled slowly.

-So you want to know, Connor, how it all happened and if this can help you think less, I will answer the question- the lord admitted slowly raising his gaze to his nephew -it all happened exactly on a very dark night with no stars, when England and Wales were still at war and your mother, my sister was just seventeen, still without a husband or an experience with men...Jade, your mother, was a sensitive, sweet girl, even too naive for her age...- the man tried to prolong as much as possible, trying to avoid the most delicate point of the matter but that Connor already knew, he knew his mother, he had lived with her until he was fifteen years of age.

-On that night, where exactly our troops were at the fighting front, Georg Hannover, your biological father, broke into our mansion with his army, reaping the dead, killing men with families and he ran into your mother and instead of killing her he reserved something even worse for her...- Jacob Jones admitted trying to finish the argument -I arrived only later, when everything had still gone on for half an hour... I'm not sure, but the fact was when I got there Georg Hannover was still on my sister's body and she was bleeding, on the floor, I saw her big blue eyes, the same colour as you, Connor, she was crying, she was full of fear and pain and could barely breathe, so as an older brother I had to do the right thing and end that man's life with all the possible pain...- concludes Jacob placing his precious cup of tea on the table.

Connor immediately stopped fiddling with his golden hair between his fingers, his uncle had never set aside time for him to tell what had happened and it was strange to him, unthinkable that the uncle had agreed, after all that had happened, to give his nephew the name of his father.

He too realised how terrible Georg Hannover was, what he had done to a girl who at the time was only seventeen years old and had risked dying in that horrible way, yet for Jacob Jones power seemed more important than family, than everything.

-On the other hand, Connor, however much you despise your father, I am grateful that your mother has decided to keep you and raise you instead of killing you like any other bastard...- the man admitted with his hands still shaking, granting the young man a slight smile on his pale and cold vow.

On the other hand Connor was sure that his uncle hated having to talk about this in front of him, he understood it from the small and cold eyes of the lord, from his pale face full of cold sweat, from his cheeks in a strong blush, by the way he looked his nephew in the eyes.

Connor was a mixture in the genetic component of his families: from his mother he had taken the big blue eyes, but he remembered exactly she had long and wavy brown and shiny hair, while he had them wavy, yes, but of a completely different colour: golden, a colour he had inherited from his father, a colour he himself hated.

-If my mother had not given birth to me, grown up and educated, you would never have been able to use me to take power...at least my mother worried about me! You, uncle, do nothing but shape my soul to your liking so you can rule, admit you don't feel sorry for your sister! Admit you love the idea that it was an Hannover who forcibly put me in my mother's womb!- Connor started to raise his voice, on which side was that man? On which side had she always been in his life?

Jacob had never chosen, never made a decision, never valued his nephew's life as a human being but always as an object, a puppet to be exploited for different purposes, thanks to his royal blood.

Jacob Jones was not human, he could not be, he had never been with him, never, not even for all those times she had pretended to care for him, to care for his mother, at whose funeral he had not even cried.

Jade Jones was his sister, she was the mother of his nephew, she died of tuberculosis when she was still very young, yet...what was she for that man? What did their kinship mean to him? Was she also just a puppet to use in his reckless power games?

The man forcefully slammed one of his hands on the surface of the woody and precious dining room table, his face was obviously reddened and from his cold little eyes the young man sensed something strange was about to happen.

-Now Connor stop with all these troublesome thoughts of yours! You're just a cheeky bastard who doesn't want to accept the truth! Yup! This you are and if your mother had had to suffer a thousand times more just to give birth to you, I would have done it, for the power, for the damned blood seen! You, demon! Ungrateful boy! If only as a baby you were not brutally drowned in a river it is also my merit! Damn ungrateful bastard!-.

Everything the man had said, every word of him hurt Connor incredibly, his soul, his cold and frozen heart, had come in an intense moment hit by the warm ardor of anger and revenge.

Stupid, he had believed him and a thousand times more would have been damned to follow him in his plan.

That man, Jacob Jones, was not human, he was a madman, unscrupulous, who in order to win power had manipulated his sister, exploited his nephew and killed his own son.

He didn't care for none of them, it didn't matter to him, not if they died or lived, who was that man then?

Connor would not have hesitated, that man did not deserve to live in this world and pollute it with his wickedness, he would not have been the one to decide once again, to enslave him.

So once again the young lord heard that internal voice in his head, the voice of his anger, it advised him, it softly whispered "skin him", "make him to pieces", "make him suffer".

It had happened to him over and over again, this was what Georg Hannover had left him, this was what he had inherited from his father and it was beautiful when he was angry, because it made him feel free, because it helped him at times to fulfill the right choice at the right time.

Connor grabbed the sharp knife placed on the table to slice the soft and warm bread in his hands, squeezed it, its ferrous handle, between his fingers, almost hurting himself.

He quickly stuck it into the man's stomach, pulled it out, dipped it back into his flesh, so much so that the blood that was now splashing out of his body didn't even have time to drip on the floor.

He repeated himself in his head again and again, every time the knife met his uncle's warm flesh, he dedicated each stab to someone: "this is for my mother, this is for Isabelle and this is for young Ezekiel."

The count of all the people injured by that man almost made Connor himself feel sick.

He could no longer control himself, no longer stop, until he reached the umpteenth stab before the man's death.

He had stabbed him a total of thirty times, Connor's hands were full of blood, cool, warm, almost pleasant to the touch.

He smiled faintly, revenge had been done, and now he was finally free from his own submission.