Rowan flinched at the outrage in his voice as he relayed to her his understanding. Her shock reverberated as she realized she didn't know he was capable of looking at her in such a way; he'd always sneered at her, smirked or had some other equally infuriatingly smug expression on his face that anything bordering on remotely caring for her was still a foreign concept. As irritating as it was, Malfoy's admonishment alone had effectively hauled Rowan back to her senses - as good an effect as if he'd slapped her across the face.

Gritting her teeth, she stared at him as panic took a backseat, only to be replaced with indignation that he would think her to be that idiotic. Never mind that she had been foolish enough to go down this path on her own without taking - or at least telling - Angie or Zelda or Delight. Perhaps deep down she knew that any of them would have insisted on coming with her, and the prospect of putting any one of them in danger had not sat well with her. Angie and Delight had their jobs and Zelda had her family; she wasn't about to ask any of them to put themselves at risk.

"I didn't go looking for some criminal." She corrected, snatching the letter back from him and hastening away, tugging at her collar as she did so. She could feel herself fading; began pacing instead to try and hold on, to not collapse on the floor from exhaustion. Everything hurt, but that was okay because the pain helped keep her awake.

"I went looking for the building because that was clearly something of significance to Maisie, I didn't expect to run into anyone." Least of all Walter, but when she'd sniffed the air it was all too easy to put two and two together. "Walter....he works with my father. I still don't know how he ties into all of this."

The feeling of dread sat heavy in her chest as she realized he no longer worked with her father; would never work with him again because of what Rowan might have done. The mingled fear and apprehension on Malfoy's face was enough to convince her that she might as well have killed him. "I - I found him there and confronted him." Yes, it was coming back to her. She tugged at the collar of her shirt. She needed air. "He said something about a memory charm, and that they had already fired him. That he was as good as dead."

Her mind raced, staggering to recover the rest of the memory of the evening. "And then he..." She struggled to find the words to describe the way he'd looked at her; leered at her. Just remembering the way his eyes raked up and down her body made her skin crawl and her hand came up to tug at the collar of her shirt again. Something pinched at the base of her neck and she flinched, hissing in pain. Frowning in confusion, her hands came up to undo the top buttons on the shirt as she walked to the large gilded mirror on the wall. She wrenched back the collar of her brother's shirt. They were faint at first, but it was easy to see that the marks were only going to get darker: A necklace of purple rosettes scattered right above her collarbone; bruises.

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