ALEK POV
Standing in front of our father, **seeing him like this—so different, yet so familiar—**did something to my chest. Twisted something deep inside. Something I wasn’t sure I wanted to name.
Hope?
Maybe.
But hope was dangerous. It was the kind of thing that could cut you open if you let it settle too deep.
I wasn’t ready for that.
Neither were my brothers.
He might have looked like the man we barely remembered from our childhood—before grief had eaten him alive and turned him into a monster—but that didn’t erase the **years** of hell we’d endured because of him. **It didn’t erase the nights we spent fearing him.**
And yet, I still pushed.
“Maybe… seeing her could help,” I said slowly, watching him carefully. “If only we had found any trace of Jennifer in Fran
