Ibrahim presses Davey Noakes to explain what the group is not going to like, and Davey admits that the problem starts with him. Years earlier, after being paid in Bitcoin for amphetamine in Amsterdam, Davey suggested paying Holly Lewis and Nick Silver in Bitcoin too. At the time, the stake was only about twenty thousand pounds, and everyone treated it as a speculative gamble.

Davey then reveals the central fraud. Once he realized the real Bitcoin existed only as a piece of paper with a string of characters on it, Davey wrote a fake set of numbers and letters on another sheet and gave that to Holly and Nick instead. Holly and Nick therefore never owned the real Bitcoin at all, while Davey gradually cashed out the genuine holdings over the years and profited personally.

As Bitcoin’s value kept rising, Davey understood that his small scam was turning into a much larger one. He considered confessing when the amount became significant, but he kept gambling that the price would fall again and convinced Holly or Nick, whenever necessary, that the time was not right to cash out. Their trust in Davey allowed the deception to continue.

Davey says the crisis came two weeks earlier, when Holly and Nick finally decided together that they wanted the money. Knowing he could not possibly cover a fortune supposedly worth hundreds of millions, Davey called in his accountant to total his assets and discovered he had about thirty-one million pounds, far short of what Holly and Nick believed they were owed. When Holly later rang wanting to meet, Davey says he was prepared to confess.

That confession was interrupted when Holly told him about the car bomb, and, as Ibrahim says, events overtook him. Davey finally confirms the practical consequence for the investigation: the paper Elizabeth and the others took from the safe that afternoon is completely worthless. The chapter overturns the assumption that Holly and Nick’s missing Bitcoin fortune was real and reveals that the entire hunt has been shaped by Davey’s long-running con.