Chap­ter 68 of We Solve Mur­ders delves deep­er into the com­plex­i­ties of François Loubet’s char­ac­ter, show­cas­ing his thoughts as both a busi­ness mogul and a manip­u­la­tive fig­ure with­in the crim­i­nal world. At the begin­ning of the chap­ter, Lou­bet reflects on the most recent mishap involv­ing Rob Ken­na, whose hired hit­man failed to car­ry out the task of elim­i­nat­ing Rosie D’An­to­nio. Rosie, a high­ly skilled and per­cep­tive writer, out­wit­ted Kenna’s hench­man, turn­ing the tables on him with her sharp mind and charis­ma. For Lou­bet, this inci­dent is both amus­ing and reveal­ing, as it under­scores the unpre­dictabil­i­ty of those involved in his oper­a­tions. How­ev­er, his amuse­ment is tem­pered by the dark­er real­i­ties of his line of work, where every vic­to­ry is short-lived and replaced by anoth­er loom­ing chal­lenge that must be man­aged metic­u­lous­ly.

As the chap­ter pro­gress­es, Lou­bet’s amuse­ment gives way to frus­tra­tion as he reflects on Rob Kenna’s fail­ure. His trust in Ken­na, already frag­ile, reach­es a break­ing point. This ero­sion of trust leads Lou­bet to con­tem­plate a more dras­tic course of action—alerting the author­i­ties about Amy Wheeler’s involve­ment in mul­ti­ple crimes. Her reck­less behav­ior and the trail of blood she’s left behind have turned into a sig­nif­i­cant lia­bil­i­ty, and Lou­bet now sees her as a poten­tial threat to his care­ful­ly con­struct­ed oper­a­tions. Despite his cal­cu­lat­ing nature, Lou­bet faces an inter­nal conflict—he knows that if Amy remains alive for anoth­er forty-eight hours, her arrest becomes inevitable. He con­tem­plates whether her death would be a more favor­able out­come, ulti­mate­ly real­iz­ing that elim­i­nat­ing her might be seen as an act of greed rather than a nec­es­sary step in the pur­suit of his goals. In his mind, he knows that keep­ing her alive and allow­ing the author­i­ties to han­dle her might ben­e­fit him in the short term, but the long-term con­se­quences remain unclear. The com­plex­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion weighs heav­i­ly on him, and while he is poised to make a deci­sion, the full extent of his options is still unfold­ing.

Despite these dark, loom­ing deci­sions regard­ing Amy, Lou­bet shifts his focus to the prag­mat­ic side of his busi­ness deal­ings. In the world of high-stakes crime and inter­na­tion­al trade, the wheels of com­merce nev­er stop turn­ing, no mat­ter the per­son­al or crim­i­nal chal­lenges one faces. Lou­bet express­es a degree of sat­is­fac­tion as he reveals a suc­cess­ful ship­ment is on track from Lon­don to São Paulo, a key move in his ongo­ing oper­a­tions. Unlike pre­vi­ous ship­ments, this time he has cho­sen to work direct­ly with Vivid Viral, cut­ting out the mid­dle­man and ensur­ing greater con­trol over the process. His deci­sion to bypass inter­me­di­aries such as Joe Blow sig­nals his grow­ing con­fi­dence in his abil­i­ty to han­dle major oper­a­tions inde­pen­dent­ly, demon­strat­ing his sharp busi­ness acu­men. This shift not only sig­ni­fies a more direct approach to con­duct­ing busi­ness but also high­lights his desire to stream­line his efforts and max­i­mize effi­cien­cy. Even in the face of mount­ing threats and crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions, Lou­bet’s focus on busi­ness remains unwa­ver­ing. His dec­la­ra­tion, “com­merce stops for no man,” encap­su­lates his unre­lent­ing com­mit­ment to main­tain­ing con­trol of his empire, no mat­ter what chal­lenges arise. For Lou­bet, the com­plex­i­ties of life—whether per­son­al, crim­i­nal, or professional—are mere­ly dif­fer­ent aspects of the same game, and his abil­i­ty to nav­i­gate them with a cool head remains one of his defin­ing traits.

As the chap­ter draws to a close, Lou­bet finds him­self once again con­tem­plat­ing his posi­tion. He is well aware that the next few days will prove piv­otal in shap­ing his future, both in busi­ness and in his more illic­it endeav­ors. Despite the ten­sion and the poten­tial risks of his ongo­ing oper­a­tions, Lou­bet retains his char­ac­ter­is­tic con­fi­dence, know­ing that he has the tools and the mind­set to han­dle what­ev­er comes next. His amuse­ment at Rob Kenna’s incom­pe­tence and Rosie’s clev­er­ness has already fad­ed into the back­ground, replaced by the sober­ing real­iza­tion that his choic­es will deter­mine his future. The chap­ter ends with Lou­bet main­tain­ing his sig­na­ture com­po­sure, prepar­ing for the chal­lenges that await, know­ing that no mat­ter how com­plex the sit­u­a­tion may become, he will always remain one step ahead.