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Well, if there’s one thing Victor’s accomplished with his vendetta on The Young and the Restless, it’s to convince pretty much everyone that he’s gone way, way too far. Nikki, who we thought at this point would stand by her man no matter what, just gave him an ultimatum: Let her destroy the AI, or she’s leaving him. And Victor, in turn, yelled that he didn’t respond well to threats — even from her!

We knew this row was coming one way or another, but we did not expect this. Victor didn’t just make Nikki jump, he nearly had us leaping out of our seats! We certainly don’t blame Nikki for feeling this was the last card she had to play. But even as we’ve been expecting this confrontation, we’ve also just been assuming that in the end, Nikki would, of course, forgive Victor and move on.

She’s forgiven him for everything he’s done and Victor has done horrible things for decades. He’s done it to his enemies, his family, Nikki herself. And after Friday’s episode, while we still feel like she will eventually, we also feel like this time might be a bit different. And that’s mainly because we all might be a bit different.

We realized that with Adam and Chelsea’s guilt-ridden talk on Thursday about how this isn’t just a business war between two titans. It’s not just Victor going after Jack or taking over Jabot. It’s a corporate battle with very, very real consequences.

We don’t live in the glamorous ’80s anymore where greed is good. Chances are a lot of folks watching these days are worried about money, jobs and whether AI will gut their career. As “Chadam” and Nikki have all pointed out, Victor is destroying not just his “enemy” but the lives of countless people with his actions. There’s no way he can keep on with this and be anything but a full-on villain anymore. And if Nikki ends up shrugging her shoulders at that, we’re not sure we could even stomach it anymore.

He has to yield. He has to change. That doesn’t mean he needs to stop being Victor, but this level of vindictiveness simply for the sake of battling Jack? That has to stop. And that’s the only way Nikki and all the rest of us will be able to forgive him and move on.