The Twelve Zenati

Authors note: Hello everyone. While I acknowledge there are many people out there with far greater knowledge than me, I also would like to point out that this is a work of fiction. In no way is my writing meant to be a factual guide on mental illness or how to manage relationships. Again, I am grateful to MsSensualiT for her continued help to be my second sets of eyes. I hope those of you who enjoy this series continue to do so. ~ellie.

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12 Zenati Pt 33

"Okay, I have to go. You have one job now, remember?" Noah arched an eyebrow at Marcella.

"Stay with Gideon and Genesis," she said automatically. "Please don't worry. I promise I won't disappear again."

"Okay," he repeated and leaned down to kiss her forehead. He hated leaving her, but he had to go to the circle meeting with Xavier. He had lingered far longer than he should have already, and he glanced at his older brother.

"We've got this. Go do your thing," Gideon chuckled.

"Yeah, okay," he said again, knowing he sounded like a broken record. Noah made himself turn away from the table where they ate lunch to stand with Xavier. He wanted to believe Marcella meant what she said, but their history told him that as soon as he took his eyes off her for more than a minute, she would run.

"Hello, Zenati's," a beautiful smiling woman, approached the table. "Nathanael is a bit eager to see you all," she said, addressing Xavier. "Don't worry about your family. I have plans to entertain my cousins all afternoon at my home, which is where you are headed coincidentally."

"I thought the meeting was here in the hotel," Xavier frowned as Oscar walked up behind his wife.

"Nathanael is doing much better, but it's still a risk for him to come so far, so the plans changed. But you are all invited to come and make yourselves at home in our home," Oscar said.

"I'd love to spend some time with our cousins. I don't believe we have had to opportunity to talk before. Your branch of the family has declined most of our invitations to the gatherings for a while now," Ally said. She watched curiously as the two sisters frowned at each other after hearing this information but said nothing. "Shall we go?" She asked, keeping the welcoming smile on her face.

"I was hoping to see Isadore while Noah was caught in his meeting," Genesis spoke up. "I don't suppose he could meet us there?"

"He was expecting that, and my cousin Louis was hoping to talk to Gideon as well. He's a bit obsessed with big metal things that fly, and Gideon is supposed to be the expert to go to about all things mechanical flight-related," Oscar chuckled.

"I think Olivia and Marcie had wanted to see their mother this afternoon. Do you think the meeting will go for long?" Vivienne asked, knowing her husband would lose all track of time once engaged in a debate on aeroplanes of any sort.

"I'm sure we can organise something after we have a chat about everything that happened. I wasn't able to meet you properly in Darwin, Marcie, so we have a bit to talk about," Oscar said and felt Noah bristle.

"I'm sure that can wait until the meeting is over," Xavier immediately jumped in to forestall any rash words or decisions from Noah. "Looks like we are all going, so we may as well make a move," he said, trying to keep his voice light despite the waves of agitation rolling off the man beside him.

"Our security is better at the house," Oscar said quietly to Noah. "We have everyone's best interests at heart with this request."

Noah nodded, but said nothing returning to Marcella to take her hand in his before following the leaders of the Gambaro out to the waiting cars. He considered what Oscar had said as they drove to the home, which was thankfully not far away. Marcella seemed content to sit in the silence of his brooding without comment.

"You okay?" Noah asked in hushed tones as they pulled up in front of the Gambaro mansion.

"You worry too much. Go to your meeting. I will be quite fine, and I won't go anywhere without you," Marcella reassured him.

"Fuck, Marcella!" Noah pulled her to him as they climbed from the car. "Where is my bossy Kitten who would not be taking all this without a fight?"

"You want me to fight you?" she asked, blinking wide eyes at him.

"No! But the Marcella I know would not be taking this without at least telling people what she wanted to do," he sighed. "It's like you changed overnight, and I don't know what to do or how to react to you now. I love you, and that will never change. I'm just not sure how to help you now."

"I love you too," she said quietly. "You don't have to help me with anything. I'm fine. Everything is fine now. Olivia has Genesis to look after her. Jessa has her kids and the Farnese family to look after her and my mother. Well, she is finally free now that my father and uncle are facing the consequences of what they did to us. Everything is right in my world. There is no need to worry about me anymore. Not even Konrad could get through all the security you have around me now."

"That's true," he said, letting his eyes scan their surroundings, noting the security as he guided her inside the house. Noah wanted to believe her, and she seemed so sincere when she spoke. Still, this woman wasn't his kitten, she purred and snuggled against him, but she no longer had any of the spirit that helped her and her sisters survive a life of violence and trauma.

"No matter what our hosts say or offer, you stay with Gideon and Genesis at all times, okay?" Noah reminded her as they entered the foyer and found their hosts waiting for them.

"Of..." Marcella began in another attempt to reassure him but froze. Her eyes became wide, and her body stiffened before she dropped her head and moved closer to Noah as if trying to hide her face in his chest. "I need to go. I can't be here," she hissed, a sliver of the Marcella Noah knew so well coming out in her voice.

"What? What happened?" he asked urgently a moment before Vivienne and Olivia appeared beside Marcella. They spoke in low voices to her, and Gideon moved swiftly to intercept one of the men Noah couldn't make out in the small crowd entering the foyer of the house.

"He's not here for you," Vivienne whispered. "He's here for the meeting just like every other leader of the tables."

"I doubt he even knows you are here at all," Olivia said, backing up Vivienne. "Let's go into the sitting room, Emma pointed out. It's not you; he's here for."

"It's okay. We can stand here for as long as you need," Noah reassured her when she refused to move with Olivia and Vivienne. He watched as Gideon greeted Marcus Battaglia and engaged him in conversation. He watched as the two men moved toward the conference room where the circle was gathering.

"You ready?" Xavier asked as he approached Noah.

"Give me a few minutes. We just had a moment of panic when Marcus Battaglia walked in," Noah murmured.

"Shit," Xavier swore and looked down at Marcella before seeming to make up his mind about something and drawing a breath. "Chella, look at me," he said sternly, surprising Noah. Her head came up, and the flash of the warrior in her eyes was momentary, but Noah caught it. She moved to stand without leaning on Noah, focusing her attention on Xavier as the flash extinguished, and she bowed her head again. "You are under my protection here as you always were in Darwin and as you were in Adelaide. No one will approach you without going through me, and no one will take you from this place except myself or Noah. Am I clear?"

"Yes, Sir," she answered almost automatically.

"Good, now you will go with Genesis and our own security team to meet with Emma and Oscar. If you feel uncomfortable in any way, you will tell one of the Zenati immediately. They will come and tell Noah and me. You are safe here. I have made sure of it. Now go while we attend our meeting."

"Yes, Sir," she said and looked up with soft eyes before turning to her sister and Genesis and walking away.

"You seemed to forget she is Chella now. The girl the Battaglia and in particular Apollo trained to be the perfect submissive wife for him. You can't coddle her, or she won't respect you, not as she is at the moment," Xavier lectured Noah and walked towards the conference room.

Noah knew that wasn't necessarily true. His Marcie was in there, locked away at the moment, but she was in there. Still, what Xavier had said saved him from having to take on that dominant role with her outside of the bedroom. He knew he had a job to do here, but he also needed to ensure she was safe not only from herself, but from the men who sought to use her for their own gains.

Xavier and Noah needed to present the circle with their findings on the Varangian and his guard. Then they needed to discuss the likelihood that it had been him behind all of the strife between the Tables and the Suebi over the past decade. While helpful in recent times, he also believed the Tater had their own agenda, and he wanted Matteo, through his family's links to the mystic community, to seek out their elders for more information. Something was going on with the three Gambaro sisters that made them, particularly Marcella, important to the Varangian leader.

*****

Marcella and the people who were there to protect her were shown into a sitting room with several Gambaro family members. She sat back and let Olivia answer questions about their lives and barely listening until she heard her mother mentioned.

"Your mother was distraught when your father was arrested," Ally explained. "She required some sedation and was moved to a family clinic so she wouldn't harm herself. You can visit her there, but she may not be the same woman you remember. I believe the last year has been very hard on her, particularly when she was led to believe Jessa had taken her own life."

Sadness filled Marcella at the horrible world in which her mother had existed over the past few months. Jessa had been the one who was supposed to stay home forever and care for her father once her mother had served her purpose in his life. The fact that her father had to give Jessa up to a blackmailer hadn't gone well for her mother. She wondered briefly if her father had somehow replaced Jessa with another young woman without Marcie knowing. Not that she had been welcome to visit her mother at the family home once she cut her ties with the family.

"She loved Jessa," Olivia said without recrimination.

"She was allowed to love Jessa, you mean," Marcella said softly. Drawing strength from her bound warrior and pushing Chella aside, Marcie came forward. The battered and bruised girl who had survived her father asked, "Who else was in the house with my parents?"

"Marcie?" Olivia asked tentatively. "No one else would have been there. You know how Papa was about privacy."

"A contracted woman was living in one of the spare rooms," Ally interrupted Olivia, who turned to her with wide eyes. "She claimed to be contracted to your Uncle Severino but had been instructed to help your mother and serve Nunzio as needed."

"Fuck, I should have known," Marcella swore. In her mind, she screamed at the two halves of her psyche, which had left her mother vulnerable when she had found out what had happened to Jessa. She hated to think of what might have happened to her mother if the Gambaro table hadn't intervened.

"Marcie?" Olivia asked again just as tentatively as she had the first time.

"What?" Marcella barked back at her sister and instantly regretted it. "I'm sorry, Olivia. I'm just mad at myself for not realising what would have happened once Papa realised he wouldn't get Jessa back at all. What did you ask?"

"I asked if you were Marcie again. I need my sister back. I need Marcie, not Chella or Marcella. I want the sister who came to Darwin to protect me from the Suebi. I want the sister who wouldn't back down or leave when I asked her to when I was still recovering from everything that happened to me," Olivia said with tears in her eyes. "I want the sister who didn't back down in the face of Genesis and his family taking over my care and the sister who didn't put up with Noah always being in her way. I want the sister who never gave up on Jessa or me no matter how badly we treated you."

"And I want my best friend back, the protective sister who adopted me as one of her own," Vivienne added, caught up in the earnest tone of Olivia's plea.

Genesis said nothing but came to stand behind Olivia as Gideon nodded to Vivienne and motioned to the other ladies to give the sisters some space. He shrugged off the interaction off as normal family tension after everything that had happened to them. He suggested that giving them some privacy was probably the best thing they could do for the sisters who had suffered so much at the hands of their parents.

Marcella stared at her sister without saying a word as a battle raged within her mind, and she fought all that she wanted to do and be for everyone in her life. She wanted to save the people she loved. She wanted to accept Noah's love and that of his family. She wanted to find and comfort her mother and organise for her to travel to Adelaide to be with Jessa so they could both be happy again. The different factions in her mind, though argued without end:

"We should get up and find Mama!" the Warrior that was Marcella raged.

"We should stay here and not run from Noah again. We promised him," Chella argued.

"We should tell Noah about our fears for Mama and ask him to let us leave with Gideon and Genesis to see her and ease her pain," Marcie offered between the two.

"There are Battaglia here! We can't trust anyone here! We have to go alone. We need to get away from this place," the Warrior broke free of the remainder of the chains suppressing her dominant personality.

"They aren't here for us!" Marcie counselled. "We need to look after Olivia. She is the one telling us she needs us, needs me!" her battered and bruised form came out from the shadows allowing the other two to see who wore all of the scars of their choices.

"You can't help us do anything. You are barely strong enough to show yourself," the warrior raged as the submissive shrunk away from the vision of the true woman they were behind all the bravado.

"Look what your choices have done to Marcie," Chella hissed at Marcella. "Take a good look and ask her to run from the people who would care for her and help her heal only to gather more scars."

"I can protect us. I have always protected the people we love, including us," Marcella screamed in denial at the visage before her.

"Look at her. You can't protect us any more than you could protect Olivia or Jessa or Mama. Look around the room. They fixed the mess our parents and uncle made, not you!" Chella retaliated.

"I found the boat and the missing Suebi at Hermione's," Marcella raged.

"No, Marcie found the boat and started the trail to the missing Suebi. You just finished her investigation. You did nothing but push away the people who cared about us. Your actions hurt people or got them hurt," Chella said sadly.

"Well, you can't talk! You have never done anything but accept the punishment that gave her the worst scars and made promises she never wanted to keep, and I couldn't let her keep. Fuck! You are as useless as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest!" The warrior raged.

Marcie watched, as if from a distance, as the two combatants in her mind continued to rage at each other. She seemed frozen in space and time as she closed her eyes and tried to block out the vision of Olivia with tears in her eyes. The image that had pulled her from the shadows of her mind to try and be present again for the one sister who still cared about her.

"Vivienne!" Olivia called, watching as Marcella closed her eyes and fell back against the cushioned sofa as if she fainted or something. She had been talking to her for so long without any response while Marcella seemed to look through her. She wondered if what she had said had been what made her sister block herself off from the world around her and the people who cared for her. "Genesis, do something, please!" she whispered, her voice cracking with emotion.

"She's probably just overtired from last night. Noah didn't look any better this morning," Genesis reassured her. He and Gideon gave each other a look, questioning if they should disturb Noah in his meeting. The girls had been talking for an hour or more before the conversation about their mother had come up, so he couldn't imagine it would take much longer to deliver the crux of the information. If it were Olivia who had appeared to pass out, he would want to know immediately, if not sooner. Gideon saw the look of worry cross Genesis's face, who then nodded and left the room searching for Noah.

*****

"X-man," Dante greeted Xavier. "It's been too long. Come sit with me for a minute while the rest of these dickheads get their acts together."

"Have you met Noah?" Xavier asked. "Dante was the one who alerted us to Marcella's presence in Brisbane," he explained as a way of introducing the two men.

"Thanks," Noah nodded and bit his tongue, wanting to rage at the man for letting her leave his gallery.

"I don't blame you for being pissed at me. If it had been Peri, I probably would have taken a swing at you already," he chuckled. "I applaud your self-control. You remind me of my brother. He was the strongest, most passionate guy I ever knew. There wasn't anything he wouldn't do for those he loved, but you didn't want to get on his bad side. So please accept my apology and know that I was made to suffer for not holding her against her will."

"What's done is done. I have her now, and that's what matters," Noah accepted his apology ungraciously and felt a pang of guilt for losing all of his self-control when it came to Marcella before this lunch and meeting. He wanted and needed her and had loved her, but it hadn't been his kitten, only the docile tamed part of her, and he wanted her in her entirety. He tried to remember back to the beginning and the woman he had first met and bantered with in Darwin. His stupid decision not to sleep with her when she had issued the invitation had been a colossal mistake. So much had happened to both of them since then, but he was determined to help her heal and get his Marcie back and show her real love. Not just his love, but that of a loving family.

"Hey, Ricco couldn't make it, sorry," Matteo said, having found out that it was Xavier who called this meeting, not their host Nathanael who was still considered too injured for a flight anywhere.

"I'm glad you could make it after everything you went through up in the Kimberley's," Xavier said. "Once you hear our version of recent events, I think you will understand why we asked for you and your brother to attend. Not just because he is a hero, but because there is a bigger picture that we hope you and he can help with."

"That sounds ominous," Matteo frowned.

"Alright, you losers, settle down. The invalid wants to talk," Massimo chuckled as the men took their seats around the table.

"Thanks for that glowing intro, Mo. No chance of my ego getting out of control in this group," he laughed lightly. "This isn't my meeting, but Xavier was kind enough to hold it here so I wouldn't miss out due to my current invalid status. Welcome to Soliman Pelligrini. I trust that Phil has filled you in on why we twelve come together regardless of our stations amongst our tables?"

"He did," Soliman said in perfect English even though his European accent was quite thick. "I am honoured to be counted amongst your circle of friends."

"The only way forward is by being united," Phil said. "So put any petty grievances and even some big ones aside for today and listen to what the Zenati have to say without interrupting. If you ever trusted my gift, now is the time to remember that. I don't know the details, yet I know it's fucking important for all of us to listen to the man Xavier brought with him, Noah Zenati. In the same way it was important for all of us to listen to Ricco when he sent his warning out." He nodded to Matteo before taking his seat.