"That's bullshit, and you know it. Noah would care about anyone he considers a friend, especially her," Gideon argued.
"Go ask him yourself. I'm not lying. He honestly didn't want to know what you and Vivienne found out," Genesis shrugged. "To tell you the truth, if he doesn't care, then why are we killing ourselves for someone who continually throws everything we have done for her back our faces? She hates me, judges her sister, and even uses your own wife's generosity and love against her."
"You ever think that's because no one ever loved her enough to do those things for her, just because they care? No one ever gave her a reason to trust their motives? Fuck Gen, you know what she went through now, and you blame her for her lack of trust?" Gideon asked incredulously.
"What? What did she go through that Olivia hasn't been through worse?" Genesis asked belligerently, taken aback by his brother's vehemence.
"You haven't read the report that Vivienne got from the doctor in Perth that I sent you, have you?" Gideon asked, stunned by the fact. "I didn't just send it for the fun of it, or to keep you in the loop. It involves Olivia too, you fucking dropkick. Read the fucking report!" He stormed off down the hall, barely registering Genesis's words that followed him, as he went in search of Noah.
"Olivia already told me everything. I don't need your report," Genesis's words finally caught up to Gideon, who wheeled around on his brother, his face a storm of emotion.
"Read. The. Fucking. Report!" Gideon glowered at him. "Then see if you still want to argue with me." Once again, Gideon turned and stormed off. He remembered Vivienne's tear-filled eyes as she begged him to help her friend, showing him the report that she had written from information that she had gotten, that morning, in a confidential file. The report was ostensibly on Olivia, whose files Vivienne could request as her doctor, but it also detailed vital information about Marcella's role in her life and the family dynamic, and it sickened Gideon to remember some of those details. The fact that Marcella Gambaro could come across as such a reasonable, well-adjusted woman, albeit with a bad temper, instead of a basket-case rocking in the corner defied logic for Gideon. Vivienne hadn't needed to beg him. He would do what was needed to find the woman and help her now.
"You fucking asshole," Gideon ground out, after he stormed into Dominic's room and grabbed his brother by the shirt front. "You don't care what happens to that girl!" he roared, and threw a stunned Noah back into the nearby chair and pointed at him. "There are reasons why she doesn't trust anyone, but she trusted you, or at least she tried to, and you fucking crushed that little bit of hope she had. Congratu-fucking-lations! You win! You're the biggest fucking asshole I know!" Then he turned and left without another word. He blocked out the calling of his name and stormed toward the elevators, catching one as it was closing.
"Hold the lift!" Noah's voice rang out, but Gideon felt only anger as he turned to see Noah striding purposefully toward him, his own face set in an angry scowl. Thankfully, the doors closed before Noah was close enough to stop it. Gideon needed to do things his way for once, instead of being a good and loyal soldier to the commanders of his family. He picked up his phone as he strode to the exit of the hospital. "Papa..." he said as Armando answered his phone immediately. "Shit is about to hit the fan, and I need your help. Can you get hold of that Imelda woman?" he asked. Then he gave his father sketchy details as he headed to his car.
When he arrived at the recruitment facility, where his father spent most of his time, he had calmed down to the point of being rational again and realised that this was probably not the best place for the meeting of minds that he had wanted, but it was too late now. His father hastily exited the building and jogged around to the passenger side, before Gideon could exit the car.
"They're waiting for us. Let's go," Armando said as he closed the door. "You can fill in the rest of the details on the way. Noah called, looking for you. He was angrier than I have heard him in a very long time, so you'd better tell me the full story," Armando growled. It had been a long time since his sons hadn't been a tight unit, looking out for each other, and he knew there was more to the story than what he had heard from Noah, who had said practically nothing aside from the fact that Gideon had lost his mind.
"Good! At least he cares about something," Gideon sighed. "Yesterday, that old woman, Imelda, told him point blank that Marcella was his curse breaker, and he spent the day moping about and looking sick because Apollo came in, claiming he was her fiancé and he had already put her in the friend zone when, apparently, she offered more in the beginning. Then this morning, when we found out that she had left the hospital without telling anyone, he ran around like a lunatic, trying to find her, and looking even sicker than he did the last time she went missing. Then he suddenly gives up, says he doesn't care what she does or where she goes. Won't even read the report I sent him, which Vivienne sat up all night transcribing from the other doctors' notes, to make it more generalised than the actual report, which she couldn't share."
"And you're mad at him for giving up on a girl who constantly pushes him, and any help she is offered, away?" Armando tried to clarify, while putting it in Noah's perspective. "She could have gone to him, to you, me, or Vivienne... anyone of us, and we would have helped her. Instead, she left, alone, without a word again."
"Do you think that she trusts anyone associated with the Tables anymore? Vivienne said she started looking into the sister's background again because Marcella looked petrified when she found out the Battaglia were arriving last night. She probably thought we were going to hand her over to them again." Gideon tried to explain it the way Vivienne had explained it to him.
"We wouldn't have allowed that to happen," Armando argued. "What do you mean 'again'?"
"You'd think her family wouldn't have allowed that to happen, either," Gideon said, making his point. "She has fewer reasons to trust us. Everything good in her life she has had to get and fight for, on her own, no help from anyone. When she went to live with her aunt, she put herself through law school, she worked three jobs, and saved enough money to help Olivia escape the family. Olivia claims that Marcella sent her away, and Marcella feels guilt for all that happened to Olivia after she left. I think that is why she is so determined to fight for Olivia's rights now, or Vivienne does."
"You're losing me here. Start at the beginning," Armando instructed, genuinely curious now.
"Last night, I stayed at the hospital, as you know, to deal with the fall-out from Apollo Martino, and to support Xavier and Dominic," Gideon said. "Junie took Emma and Vivienne home with her, or so I thought, but Vivienne had her drop her back at our place. You see, she hadn't really looked in any great depth at the records sent from Perth. She'd had Olivia sign some sort of legal waiver to have all her medical records sent, because Vivienne would be her doctor, along with Hector. She'd assumed that all of the trauma Olivia was dealing with was solely because of what had occurred during her time with Remington Royce. And she was right, to a degree."
"Go on..." Armando said, his voice calmer, realising that this would be a longer story than he had originally thought.
"Olivia, along with her sisters, had to see a psychologist when it was discovered that Marcella had been sent to the Battaglia for her trial underage and with dubious reasons. The whole family came under investigation. Upon confirmation from the family doctor that nothing untoward had ever happened to any of the girls, or their mother, the investigation was dropped and the father got a slap on the wrist for sending her before she was eighteen. They dropped it despite concerns from the psychologist, who had started doing her own investigation and continued it after Nunzio severed any further contact between the psychologist and the family. The notes made in the file show that the abuse started being documented several years before, when a teacher who was concerned about the amount of time Marcella had off school for mystery illnesses and accidents, and how that affected her academic achievements," Gideon began.
"It was covered up again by a clean bill of health from the family doctor?" Armando asked. It wouldn't be the first time such things had happened. When he was a child, it was far too common for children of the Tables to be home-schooled, and corporal punishment was the norm.
"You got it. Then the second time Marcella was sent to the Battaglia, it was under an assumed name. The investigation that followed that debacle intensified, and the net for gathering information widened. There is an interview with Olivia, and the psychologist from that time, where she talks about Marcella, and it was linked to these other documents from the investigation. From what it says, Olivia was never abused or molested because either Marcella continually took the blame for Olivia's mistakes or Olivia pushed the blame onto her. Marcella would often be beaten to the point of requiring medical treatment, where she would be taken to the family doctor. That doctor would sedate her to treat her, and then keep her sedated for days at a time while he molested her. He started giving her contraceptive injections without her knowledge, and when she started skipping her period, her father assumed that she was pregnant to some boy at school and beat her all the more, in an attempt to end the pregnancy," he said disgustedly.
"The doctor relayed that she wasn't pregnant but, in fact, on contraception, saying it was at her request. Her father decided to send her to the Battaglia facility where she could learn how to be a good woman and not the wicked girl she had grown into, always in trouble and causing problems. One of the impartial investigators, who had been brought in because the Battaglia were involved in the investigation themselves, was the Farnese man that Jessa, the eldest sister, ended up marrying. All of the notes and records on Jessa have disappeared, unsurprisingly. What happened after that is what we have all been told by Marcus and Francesco over the last twenty-four hours," Gideon finally finished and let out a sigh.
