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Credit: Hallmark Entertainment/Courtesy of the Everett Collection

On September 15, it was four years since Pete Ortiz passed away.

As Vanessa Marcil took to Instagram this week, she was holding nothing back. “It is the anniversary of my father’s death,” she began. Her son “Kassius’ grandfather.”

The actress and her father were estranged for many years — decades, she told TV Insider in 2015. With good reason. “Pete Ortiz was a ferociously abusive and violent man,” she shared on social media. “Living with him for 17 years formed my young life in many ways.”

Now the General Hospital alum’s feelings about him are… well, complicated seems like the best word to describe them. Six years ago, she told TV Insider that she was opening two restaurants with him and taping a pilot for a Mexican cooking show that she said was about “food, family and forgiveness.”

So yeah… it’s complicated. “I don’t miss him,” Brenda’s former portrayer Instagrammed, “yet I grieve over what could have been for my mother and for us. For my children. For him. What a beautiful family to lose. 

“Rest in power, pop,” she concluded her post, which was accompanied by a series of family photos (which you can review by clicking above).

On your way to read the next story, stop off at the below photo gallery, which includes pictures of a whole lot more soap stars and their dads (with whom we can only hope they’ve had less fraught relationships).