The Gardener (El jardinero; 2025)
La China Jurado had built her life around two things: survival and loyalty. A fierce and calculating woman, she ran a modest gardening company that serviced the wealthier neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city. To the casual observer, she was simply another hardworking entrepreneur, a woman who had weathered life’s storms and come out stronger for it. But behind the manicured hedges and rose bushes she and her team tended, La China concealed a far more dangerous trade: contract killing. For the right price, she could make a problem disappear as cleanly and quietly as dead leaves whisked away on the autumn wind.
At the heart of her operation was her son, Elmer. A large, brooding figure with an intensity that unsettled even those who thought they knew him, Elmer was deeply loyal to his mother. Yet he struggled with emotional regulation in a way that even La China sometimes found difficult to manage. His emotions, when they surfaced, tended to overwhelm him, making him unpredictable in a business that demanded precision and detachment. Still, he was invaluable — a weapon honed by years of La China's careful and sometimes brutal tutelage. Together, they kept their double life hidden beneath the veneer of soil and sweat.
Their latest contract seemed like any other. The target was a young woman named Violeta Morales, a kindergarten teacher with no apparent ties to the criminal world. The reasons behind the contract were never La China’s concern — she operated on a need-to-know basis. Whoever had paid for Violeta's life wanted no questions asked, and La China was content to oblige. In her line of work, curiosity could be lethal.
As always, they planned the hit meticulously. Surveillance began under the guise of offering landscaping services to the small private school where Violeta taught. It was the perfect setup: Elmer, posing as a new hire, could move freely about the campus without raising suspicion. La China handled the paperwork and logistics while Elmer observed their target, learning her routines and habits, waiting for the right moment to strike.
But something unexpected happened.
From the moment Elmer first laid eyes on Violeta, something inside him shifted. She wasn’t what he had expected. She had none of the hardness he associated with the adults in his world, none of the duplicity or cruelty. Violeta was warm, her laughter genuine, her care for the children around her unmistakable. She moved through her day with an openness that was disarming, an effortless grace that made the grim task ahead seem suddenly monstrous.
Elmer found himself lingering longer than necessary near her classroom, inventing excuses to help her carry supplies or fix minor landscaping issues nearby. Violeta, oblivious to his true purpose, welcomed his assistance with a kind smile that stirred feelings in Elmer he didn't fully understand — feelings he hadn’t experienced in years, if ever.
At first, La China chalked up Elmer’s hesitations to his usual difficulty handling emotions. She grew impatient as days turned into weeks without progress. To her, Violeta was just another job, another name on a list that needed crossing off. The longer Elmer delayed, the more she worried he would compromise everything they had built.
She confronted him one evening after they closed up shop. They sat in the cramped back office of their nursery, the air thick with the smell of fertilizer and old receipts. La China, in her blunt, unsentimental way, demanded to know what was causing the delay. Elmer struggled to articulate his conflict. He couldn't bring himself to admit the truth—that he had developed feelings for the woman he was supposed to kill—but La China was no fool. She saw the truth in his downcast eyes and stiff posture.
"You think she cares about you, mijo?" La China said, her voice low and cutting. "You’re just a gardener to her. A nobody."
But it didn’t matter. Whether it was love, lust, or some other desperate need for connection, Elmer had already crossed an invisible line. He couldn’t kill Violeta. Not now.
La China knew this would end badly. Sentimentality was a luxury they couldn't afford. If they refused a contract — worse, botched it — the consequences would be severe. Their clients were not the forgiving type. Yet, against her better judgment, La China hesitated. Elmer was all she had left. She had sacrificed too much to lose him now.
In secret, La China began devising an alternative plan. If they couldn't kill Violeta, perhaps they could fake her death. It was a risky proposition, one that would require resources they didn't readily have and a level of deceit that even she found daunting. But she saw no other way to protect both her son and their livelihood.
Meanwhile, Elmer's bond with Violeta deepened. She sensed something wounded in him, something fragile behind his hulking exterior, and her natural empathy drove her to try and draw him out. Elmer, who had spent his life mistrusting everyone but his mother, found himself wanting to confide in her, to tell her everything — the truth about who he was and the danger she was in. But he knew that revelation would destroy whatever fragile connection they had.
As the deadline for the hit loomed closer, pressure mounted. Their client, growing impatient, issued threats. La China and Elmer would become the next targets if the job wasn't completed soon. La China’s plan to fake Violeta’s death became not just a desperate gambit, but their only chance at survival.
Late one night, under the cover of darkness, La China and Elmer put their plan into motion. They staged an abduction, creating just enough chaos and evidence to suggest that Violeta had been taken and likely killed. It was a dangerous dance, requiring split-second timing and the absolute trust of a woman who didn’t even know she was fighting for her life.
When Violeta woke up in a safe house far outside the city, confused and terrified, Elmer was there to try and explain. He stumbled through the story, leaving out the bloodiest parts, portraying himself not as her would-be killer but as her savior.
Whether Violeta would ever forgive him — whether she could ever come to terms with the truth—was a question for another day. For now, survival was enough.
La China watched from a distance, her heart heavy with the knowledge that their world had irrevocably changed. Elmer was no longer the boy she had shaped to suit her needs. He had found something — someone — worth defying her for.
And for the first time in her life, La China realized that love, inconvenient and messy as it was, might be the one thing even she couldn’t control.
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