I know! He was such a confusing damn character, I thought he was on his way to redemption, and then he’d do something so horrible. Post-kidnap he seemed like he’d turned over a new leaf, he seemed to genuinely care for Juls and while I question the necessity of telling her why exactly he’d been horrible to her as Chino “Your mom cheated on me and I didn’t think you were my kid”, not a single part of which is okay, maybe having an actual tangible reason was valuable to Juls, to know that it wasn’t her fault, to know why. And he really did seem like he wanted to be in her life and in a good way.
I feel like the writers wanted to show two different things with him, his natural charm at times, why Lupe stayed with him all those years, and this his specific journey as Beltran, how he was learning to care for Juls through caring for his other kid (who was also not “his”), some steps forward, some back, but man, his steps back were SO huge.