Persist thenReply does not fire (Kotlin/Java) for event beahviour

Akka
1

After persist I want to execute thenReply from my command handler. But it won’t fire using this structure:
Effect().persist(SomethingHappend(id)).thenReply(replyTo) { … }

If I do the tell explicitly then it does fire:
val persisted = Effect().persist(SomethingHappend(id))
replyTo.tell(…)
persisted

I am assuming it has something to do with types
Thanks