Page Badge Count

I assume Page Badge Count cannot readily be used to count as follows ?

Object A (Base Object) --< Items
Object A (Base Object) --< Object B --< Items

Ideally it would be nice to do a count across both sets of Items but cannot see a way to make the page badge count functionality work for this.

Bear in mind that currently the (specific) items connected to Object B are NOT connected to Object A except via the Object B relationship paths. And vice versa the Items connected directly to Object A are not connected to Object B via a relationship path.

The only way I can see this works is if all Items (including those connected to Object B) are connected to Object A. Then obviously I can use various subsets to match the items I need to count and so on - I just don’t see a way to do it when multiple relationship paths are used.

I can probably find a way to composite a count value across both Objects using other means but that means I cannot specifically use the Page Badge Counts functionality.

Thanks