General Hospital spoilers: Valentin returns just in time to face Sonny's wrath?

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When General Hospital’s Valentin (James Patrick Stuart) left Port Charles weeks ago, we felt his departure was a bit unsatisfying. While it was fun to watch John Cates’ (Adam J. Harrington) case into Pikeman, and by extension Valentin, fall apart when the Cassadine left town before his arrest, Valentin’s exit left a huge storyline dangling unresolved.

Although all the fingers are currently pointing at Ava (Maura West) for switching Sonny’s (Maurice Benard) bipolar medication with placebos, she was only upping the ante on a scheme first initiated by Valentin.

As show fans know, Valentin was running Pikeman and he wanted to take over Sonny’s territory. That would prove to be a difficult task, so once Valentin found out about Sonny’s bipolar disorder and located where he gets his medication for it filled, Valentin persuaded the pharmacist to give Sonny a weakened prescription. The former WSB agent hoped the weakened dose would slowly cause Sonny to unravel to the point he wouldn’t be able to maintain control of his territory.

Now once Ava realized that Sonny’s medication was weakened, not knowing who was responsible, she sat on the information. Then as the kingpin tossed her out of his penthouse and decided to seek full custody of their daughter, Ava replaced the weakened medication altogether with placebos. If it wasn’t for Donna (Scarlett Spears) taking what she thought was "daddy’s vitamins," Sonny may still be in the dark about the prescription swap.

With all that being said, Sonny now knows he had a target placed on his back in terms of his mental health, and he, along with Carly (Laura Wright) and Jason (Steve Burton) are looking to blame Ava. Given she has a history of tampering with Morgan’s (Bryan Craig) bipolar medication, she's the prime suspect.

But unlike with the Morgan incident, Ava can actually point to someone else for being responsible, as she wasn’t the first culprit here. She’s not likely to take responsibility for her part, but rather pin it on the first person. She already denied to Jason that she’s done anything to harm Sonny.

In the following preview clip, Jason meets with Sonny and it looks like he relays the “I’m innocent" message from Ava. He mentions that Sonny probably has another enemy out there, so we surmise it’s only a matter of time before all roads lead to Valentin.

Not for nothing, it shouldn’t be that hard to connect things to Valentin. Sure John got to the pharmacist in question first to hide him, but considering Jason knows that the Pikeman organization wanted to eliminate Sonny, he should soon realize that Valentin may be behind the medicine swap. And with the Pikeman investigation officially dead in the water, it’s not hard to imagine Valentin thinking it’s safe to return to town at some point.

Valentin may be able to skirt around paying for his crimes with the police, but we aren’t sure he can do the same when it comes to paying for what he did to Sonny. The Corinthos patriarch likely won’t take it easy on him, especially when you factor in that Valentin is to blame for Dante (Dominic Zamprogna) being shot.

New episodes of General Hospital air on weekdays on ABC. If you miss an episode, you can catch up on Hulu.