Victor invited Ashley to lunch and tried to get her to take a deal to leave Jabot and work for him at Newman-Chancellor. But Ashley declined and left early, arriving back at the lab in time to see her lab assistant Tobias taking photos of their secret work. She guessed that he was working for Victor, and decided to let him continue in order to feed him bogus information. Ashley runs into Joe Clark at the athletic club. After referring to them having a good thing going back in New York City, they made plans to spend New Year's Eve together. In May 2017, Ashley's mother Dina came for a "permanent" visit. In October 2017, Dina exposed that John Abbott wasn't Ashley's father. Ashley leaves Genoa City in October 2018, following a series of events that leave her feeling alienated from both the Abbott family and Jabot, following the discovery that John and Dina left legal documents leaving all of Ashley's product patents to her; she confesses she's leaving for Paris to launch her own company with said-patents.