A woman starved of affection her whole life does not have ordinary defenses against affection; she has a hunger that will explain away almost anything to keep being fed.

Dexter knew that.

He had, I later learned, known who I was the entire time — not a stranger he happened to fall for, but a target he had researched down to the DNA, a lost heiress worth fifty million dollars whose one vulnerability was that no one had ever chosen her.

So he chose me.

Loudly, attentively, relentlessly, he chose me, and to a person who had been chosen by no one, being chosen is not a pleasure but a need, and a need can be exploited more easily than any greed.

I did not fall for Dexter because I was foolish.