how to make a subset of commands be conditional?

I'm having issues finding a direct answer to my question, maybe because I don't know how to phrase it or the correct terms. I'm looking to find out how to make a subset of commands in a chain be "either or" as in

A && B && (C || D) && E && F

where the result of the previous command dictates if the next fires. In this case it's a chef command

knife vault create

that causes the issue with a break error when trying to create a vault that already exists. So I want to do

knife vault update

if knife vault create errors out of the script Heres a bigger overview

command1 && \
command2 && \
(knife vault create
or
knife vault update) && \
command4 && \
continuing...

As there are so few cases (1) so far in the script I'm making I wanted to keep the formatting instead of suddenly beginning with if/else or something "more advanced".