𝐋𝐔𝐋𝐈𝐀 𝐓𝐎𝐌𝐀 - liliana's half-sister, alive, 4: unbeknowst to the entire family, lulia was not conceived through magda and gabriel as they had not been intimate in years upon lulia's birth, instead she is the product of one of gabriel's contract pay ups where magda was kept from dawn until dusk the following day. lulia looks the spitting image of liliana and magda, so her true lineage is lost to the winds. she enjoys singing and will sing songs that matei and ana have taught her from romania, as well as sharing these songs with liliana's customers.

her childhood was spent on the streets of sibiu, dark hair braided tightly to her skull and feet bare as she manouvered through crowded markets - whilst she envied the children escorted by a governess, she enjoyed the feeling of the breeze passing her like a whippet more. her father ran the toma's petals in the market square of sibiu, a quaint florist with colourful blooms overarching the doorways and windows, with ivy crawling along chipped bricks. it was a fairytale looking home. her father was a businessman through and through, a greasy smile and charm coming out of his ears - he could sell a withering dandelion to the most prestigious man of romania and face no consequences. he was a lecher. a villian. liliana believed the business to be a successful one because of the flowers they produced, because of the bouquets her and her mother would formulise in the backroom of the shop, but at fourteen she discovered the truth. whilst her father had never been her favourite - he had beaten her, burned her, ridiculed her - she never could believe he would go as far as whoring out her mother for higher paying contracts. it sickened liliana and she tried to run from her home more than once. each time brought a new scar to her back and had her mother in tears. her mother had lily's younger sister when lily was eighteen, and no matter the effort put in by lily and the other women present, her mother gave up. she passed and left vulnerable girls with a man who cared only for the money that lined his pockets. it took two months before liliana was takinng over her mother's role as the cash cow, the lady on display, the prize of toma. it sickened her, but she saw the eyes of a sweet child, a little girl who hasn't seen the horror of the world yet. she would protect her sister. liliana began to save a coin here and there, a small amount that wouldn't show to her father, and hide them where her father would never look - in her mother's empty jewellery box. her father believed she had seen the light when she began taking more jobs, but instead it was so she could earn more and more money to escape. at twenty, in the dead of night, she sought out her elderly grandparents on the edge of sibiu - her mother's parents who had not seen liliana since she was ten and never met their youngest granddaughter - pleading for them to join them, to escape as a family from the clutches of that manipulative man. so they did. england wasn't their first port of call, but it became a permenant placement after liliana had been gifted the deed to a shop and flat above from a generous beneficiary back home with connections to london. the toma family has now been in london for almost two years and liliana hopes to become a floral supplier to the ton. by any means necessary.