Victoria Victor collage Y&R
Credit: Howard Wise/JPI

Who is Victoria texting? Can they outmaneuver the master?!

We’ve already decided that Young & Restless’ Victoria is working an agenda in New York. It’s become increasingly clear by the day that she’s up to something that she’s not sharing with the man she purportedly loves, which is just one of the reasons we came to the conclusion that he is her target. Or one of them. Read our reasons for believing Victoria is setting up Ashland to fail (and what her endgame is) here.

But something intriguing happened at the end of Tuesday’s episode that gave us pause. Victoria texted a mystery person to let them know “everything’s coming together.” We were left thinking, “Whaaa?” because we assumed she was executing a scheme on her own in order to prove herself to everyone that had doubted her — which, as she pointed out to Ashland, includes everyone in her family to some degree.

So, who the heck is she texting?! It can’t be her father — because pride — although she’s clearly using her ability to figure out what Victor’s going to do next to her advantage as part of this plot. After all, she called Nick to let it “slip” that she and Ashland were starting a venture, knowing her concerned brother wouldn’t be able to resist passing along the intel to their father. Unless… that was the plan all along.

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Victoria and Nick had a long conversation before she left for New York, part of which viewers weren’t privy to. Might she have recruited her brother to participate in her plan to deal Ashland the hand he so richly deserves whilst also protecting her interests at Newman Enterprises?

The timing of Nick’s sudden renewed interest in the company is certainly suspect. It would also explain why Victoria wasn’t more upset about Adam being put in as CEO — she fully anticipated the move by her father and had a plan in place to deal with it. Namely, Nick returning to Newman Enterprises to keep an eye on her interests. If so, Nick played Victor like a fiddle by baiting Adam in front of him at Society. Now, his father won’t be able to resist making a pitch for Nick to return to the fold… and something tells us he’ll accept.

There’s a decent chance that Nick was the person Victoria was texting. It doesn’t make much sense for it to be Nikki, who is preoccupied with running Diane out of town anyway, and it would be a huge twist if it were to be Adam, working alongside his sister to give Locke his just desserts. A twist so big that we don’t see the writers going there.

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There is one other viable possibility, however, and that’s Michael Baldwin, who has a vested interest in seeing Locke brought to his knees after his stint in the Peruvian prison. The hotshot attorney was on a shifty call when Lauren caught up with him at the hotel, and could be helping Victoria pull off a behind-the-scenes legal/banking scheme to trick Ashland into risking all of his funds, believing that he’s investing in a start-up with Victoria, only to realize he’s been duped just as he’d planned to deceive her when he faked cancer.

Any way you slice it — whether Victoria’s in cahoots with Nick, Adam or Michael — Victor ain’t gonna see this coming! If she pulls this off, will it mean that the daughter of the man who is always ten steps ahead of everyone has outmaneuvered the master?! Or will Victoria make the statement of a lifetime only to have Victor tell her he knew what she was up to all along?!

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Guess we’ll have to tune in to find out. Who do you think Victoria’s texting? Let us know in the comment section below.

Look over the past of Young & Restless’ Michael Baldwin in the gallery below.