Prologue

Max rolled over, slowly inhaling and exhaling as his bones creaked underneath his sweaty skin. His clock shined bright in the darkness, too bright. He reached out to turn the clock face dow. It was 3:30 in the morning, the outside air was hot and humid.

Pulling his blankers closer around him, Max continued to try and fall back asleep. It was quite a while before he had to go to work and wake Sofia up. He didn't even know what woke him up. Sleep was getting harder and harder to come by these days. He was always worried about Sofia and making sure that she is okay.

The sun shining in through the cracks of the blinds on his window with the promise of a new day. He would get up, open the blinds, wash his face, pull on a different shirt, and go wake his kid.

Max loved his kid more than anything. He loved her more than he did himself, and he wanted the world for her, just like every father should. Sofia, who was smart, stubborn, crude and kind. She was a constant reminder of her mother and himself, from her smile down to the way the tears ran crookedly over her cheeks.

Sighing, Max ran a hand down his face. He turned his face into his pillow and tried to push everything out of his mind, trying to envision a black wall in front of his mind.

It wasn't working.

There wasn't a lot of things that Max enjoyed in his life, but one of the things that he enjoyed most was his daughter. She was a splitting image of him. To his hair down to the color of his eyes.

"Daddy?" Sofia was standing in the doorway. The sleeves of her shirt were clutched in her hands, fists shaking. It was one of Max's, navy blue and frayed, coming down to the tops of her knees. Sofia wore it every night, telling him multiple times that the shirt smelled like him.

Sofia was almost invisible in the pitch black darkness, but it looked like she was trembling slightly. Max heard her sniff, and another sigh escaped his lips. Not a frustrated sigh, but a sad, sorry sigh, one that carried memories and whispers of better days.

"Come here mi amor." Max said as he sat up in his bed, patting the space next to him.

Sofia sat down on the bed, and with the faint light from the clock on the table next to her, Max could see that her lower lip was trembling under teeth that were sunk into the skin. He gathered her into his arms, pulling her onto his lap and against his chest. He could feel her shaking underneath his arms, not from the cold but from fear.

"Sofia..." He rested his chin on her shoulder, kissing her cheeks and jawline, rubbing her arms. "What's wrong, Sofia?"

"I... I had a nightmare. I watched you die and there was nothing I could do. I was all alone, Dad." Sofia sniffled. The soft sound was hidden under a cloth covered fist as Sofia tried hard not to cry. "You were gone, Daddy."

Max shut his eyes for a moment, trying hard not to cry himself. He didn't even know why, but all of a sudden he was emotional and he had an overwhelming surge of love for his daughter hit him like a blow in the chest. He couldn't bear to see her like this, in tears because she had thought she had lost him. She was only nine years old; death should have been a foreign concept to her mind, a mind that Max was afraid was becoming less and less naive and gentle by each day.

Max shifted so that he could see Sofia's eyes, turning her so that she was facing him. He thumbed his fingertip under her eyes, catching her tears on his finger. Her pale, bright blue eyes were wet and shiny with tears that had yet to fall as she looked up at her father.

"Listen to me, Sofia. I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to be here for your next birthday, for your graduation, for your first lover, your wedding day, I'm going to be here. I'm not going to leave you. Not ever." He gripped her shoulders and looked at her. "I'm staying right here with you until the day I die."

"P-promise?"

"I promise, Sofia." Max said as he pulled his daughter into a tight hug. He felt the familiar shape of her body in his arms, gangly, thin limbs that wouldn't stop shaking no matter how hard Max squeezed her.

"I promise."

Who knew that he wouldn't be able to keep his promise to her. That it would cost his life in the process.